STARRED Book Review: Hell Is a World Without You

IndieBookView

Jan 23

Hell Is a World Without You

by Jason Kirk

Genre: Fiction / Coming of Age

ISBN: 9781735492643

Print Length: 314 pages

Reviewed by Warren Maxwell

"I didn't know know whether my dad had spent the past 2,360 days in eternal conscious torment, but I knew I wanted to play pickup football."

Isaac Siena Jr. is caught in a maze of religiosity, secularism, and raging hormones as he enters high school. The temptations of public school clash with his mother's end-of-days obsession, his older brother's fire and brimstone preaching, an endless series of religious camps and programs, and the churning voice in his head that thrashes him for so much as being attracted to a non-believing Pokemon player in the cafeteria. Moving chronologically through the four years of high school, this novel riffs on the intense bonds, doubts, and discoveries that young adults make on the path toward maturity.

"It's been a month, and I haven't ignited a single global revival. If I'm such a crappy Christian that I go this whole semester without leading any classmates to eternal life, I don't deserve my temporary life."

This story reveals the cruelties of indoctrinating children and insisting their obedience to an ideology they don't understand while also championing the many possibilities and salutary models of spirituality. The young adults in this book attend church events thousands of times before turning thirteen, memorize enormous tracts of scripture, and compete to be the most righteous, humble, and obedient. In the case of Isaac this creates a volatile dissonance that sees him fantasizing about self harm and punishment in order to live in accordance with the harsh moral universe of his community. In a way, the essence of faith becomes this novel's subject. Does hell exist, and if so why? What relationship do we have to our loved ones after they have died? What role does fear have in the education of children? All these questions are urgently brought to the surface during the course of the narrative.

"Longing to be strangled by lesbians, I loudly recited Psalm 24 beside my school's deeply anti-Christian HOME OF THE CRUSADERS: STATE CHAMPS '89 sign."