I notice I have finished reading three books simultaneously, and each one is worthy of a recommendation. 1. Brighton Rock - an old favourite - Catholic noir of noir, with those wonderful images scattered as allegory: of the sea shifting under the piles of the pier in the thunderstorm, "hell lay about him in his infancy", and the darkest of endings - truly a parable of religious despair in Greeneland.
2. A Visit from the Good Squad (Jennifer Egan) - newly published and ( can I also recommend this) borrowed via Kent Libraries brilliant computer system. Follows my continuing love affair with the American novel that Richard Ford reignited a couple of years ago - dark, touching, funny: I'd buy it if I had the shelf-space and I probably will buy it and reread it some time.3. Love Wins by Rob Bell - lent to me by a new colleague - riveting, refreshing, controversial, skating on some thin ice about universalism but I was happy to be caught in the slipstream - says some necessary things, I guess even more necessary in the US context - in the end I think he does maintain a case for the essential need to make a response of trust to Christ, but many will be uncomfortable with it.
