Saturday, May 2, 2009

The Other Shack

On a recent trip to the Ozarks, my husband and I took a walking trail along Mill Creek near Jasper, Arkansas, to visit a home built in the 1800's and rebuilt using the same wood in 1930.


It had rained recently and the not quite half-mile trail was muddy and sometimes slippery, but we enjoyed the walk to get there.

While visiting friends the day before in southeast Missouri, my friend Gayle asked if I'd read The Shack. No, I hadn't heard of it. Her Sunday School class had read the book together. She thought the book was "a little strange." She wanted me to take the book and let her know what I thought of it.

The first thing I did was read the reviews on the back cover. A well-known recording artist read the book with his wife, and cried. Another reviewer said, "If you read one work of fiction this year, let this be it."

I showed my husband the front cover. "Look at this. The #1 New York Times Bestseller. Over three million copies in print."

"This book has the potential to do for our generation what John Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress did for his. It's that good!" Eugene Peterson.

I must have missed it. The Shack was difficult for me to read. In fact, I couldn't get through it. I had trouble getting started. As a writer, I wondered how the book got published. If Wm.Paul Young had been in our writers group, someone would have suggested he cut much of the first matter, start in the middle of action with a good hook. Show, don't tell. I kept trying to read as we traveled. If my friend hadn't asked me what I thought of the book, I wouldn't have stayed with it as long as I did.

I found an interview with the author on Youtube. He wrote the book for his children, he said, as "a metaphor for the place we get hurt and stuck." Maybe I just don't get metaphors.

This week I visited my friend Betty and noticed a copy of The Shack open on the table by the sofa where we sat. "Oh, The Shack," I said. "What do you think?"

"Have you read this?" she asked. "Ive been trying to read it for about a month, and I'm on page 100. This is just so disturbing," she said.

I know. I made my way to page 122 before passing it on to my granddaughter, an avid reader, at her request. This child who read the Twilight series in record time is still working on getting through The Shack.

Not everyone will like what we write, but some will. This is an encouragement to keep writing.