So, a while back one of my wife’s friends recommended this book to her, and said recommendation was then passed along to me. Ordinarily, this is not a book I would ever even consider reading, but the wife seemed to enjoy it, and it’s rare that she will read/watch/listen to something and feel compelled to share it with me. Our tastes in things just run completely contrary to each others. She likes Janet Jackson and En Vogue; I like Lightning Bolt and Miles Davis. One of her favorite movies is White Christmas; I like that internet video of one kid hitting another in the head with a shovel. So if she feels like there is some benefit I could take away from this, even with her very specific knowledge of my expansive catalog of dislikes, then I feel like I owe it to her to give it a whirl.
That being said, I didn’t hate this book, but it’s also too problematic to actually like. Here’s the basic setup: You’ve got Mack, the protagonist. His youngest daughter is kidnapped and murdered while the family is on vacation at the lake. The family grieves for a couple of years, until a note from God shows up in the mailbox one day, asking Mack to meet him for a weekend at the shack where his daughter was taken. Not the worst premise, right? A dozen different authors could have taken it in a dozen different ways, but our lot is to be stuck with William Young. I’m sure he’s a very nice dude, but the writing could charitably be called piss-poor. My wife listened to the audio book, and I bet that softens a lot of the awkward language and syntax, but this book is a classic example of message over style. The Shack is self-published, and it shows. This thing has clearly never seen the crimson tongue of an editor’s pen, and the claim at the end that it went through three “major” re-writes is dubious at best. Or it just started life as a TOTAL MESS.
The author working on the first draft (artist's rendering)
But here’s the rub: if you can manage to get past the headache inducing anti-style Young engages in (I’ve taken to calling it ‘Junior High Gothic’), there is some pretty heady philosophical stuff in the back half of the book. Two-thirds of the book is spent in and around the titular shack, with the holy trinity in human form kickin’ it with Mack. There’s some mild racism going on when you first meet the team. God takes the form of a big black woman, who slips in and out of a ‘mammy’ patois, Jesus is described as “… Middle Eastern” whose “…features were pleasant enough, but he was not particularly handsome”, and for some inexplicable reason, the holy spirit is a tiny Asian lady in gardening togs.
Now it starts to get weird. Ostensibly, this is a Christian-oriented book; that’s certainly who it’s being marketed towards, and all initial signs point towards this idea. Young however, seems to all but reject any kind of mainstream religious doctrine, and instead cherry picks his own theology and hangs it across a vaguely Judeo-Christian framework. At several points, he explicitly has God state that he/she doesn’t care for organized religion or church, at least the way we’re running things. Which speaks to another thorny issue: God is transparently used to simply voice Young’s own opinions and beliefs, which while understandable, is still pretty ballsy. Bruce Cockburn figures more heavily into the story than he probably should, not to mention the strangely (in)significant knowledge of how collard greens give you the shits, which manages to earn a callback near the end of the book. Granted, these are probably the two strangest examples, but I think you get the idea.
On the other end of that however, this presumption to use God as a mouthpiece leads to some interesting ideas. In the world of The Shack, God tacitly endorses a system of anarcho-syndicalism, which in it’s own crazy way, makes sense. God explains to Mack that in the perfect plan, there would be no need for law, that it is in fact man’s need for control over identity that led to the creation of law in the first place. The thrust of all this is in service to the core belief that you must give up your life to God, and relinquish control. It goes far, FAR deeper than I am doing here, but suffice to say, there is quite a bit of intriguing philosophy to be had if you’re willing to invest the time.
To be sure, there are other problems. The framing device is unnecessary, the pacing veers between stilted and reckless, and the language becomes so knotty at times it can seem like Young is just banging on the keys in the hopes that once he hits a certain quota of letters, the plot will automatically get itself back on the rails. But if you can maintain an open mind, and are willing to put in a little effort, there are some interesting, valid ideas hidden within a surprising amount of subversion.
The Shack gets a 3 out of 5.
