Book reviews
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Mountains Beyond Mountains, Tracy Kidder
Mountains Beyond Mountains: The Quest of Dr. Paul Farmer, a Man Who Would Cure the World by Tracy Kidder
Tracy Kidder is a genius. MOUNTAINS BEYOND MOUNTAINS is a journalistic portrait of Paul Farmer, the founder of Partners in Health and an extraordinary advocate for the Haitian poor. I admire how Kidder includes just enough of his own sense of intrigue–what makes this guy tick?–and discomfort–how come Farmer makes him feel inadequate?–to hook the reader in what feels like a personal story but in fact is largely biography. This book is a good example of literary journalism.
Farmer is strongly influenced by liberation theology, but he’s brought these principles to bear on the field of medicine, especially the treatment of TB. I found many aspects of his work personally challenging. He remains a doctor dedicated to seeing individual patients, even if this entails 10-hour treks through the central plateau of Haiti, as he grows in prominence and eventually comes to influence national health care systems around the globe. Kidder implies that this groundedness in doctoring individuals is the key to his success. The more he advocates for quality care for individuals, the more Farmer gets into political trouble. Once again, radical love even on a small scale rattles those in power. His story has challenged me to keep my feet firmly planted in the dirty particulars of working with ordinary people while at the same time bringing the insights of this work out to influence a larger sphere. We have a mandate to correct economic and social injustices, Farmer says. How can I take up this mantel as a writer? I’ve a lot to think about.
An Unquenchable Thirst by Mary Johnson
I have utmost regard for Mary Johnson. The theology she stakes her life on–a divine presence who invites humans into fullness–isn’t so remarkable in isolation, but when set against the theology of Mother Teresa and the Missionaries of Charity, it becomes radically rebellious. Mother Teresa’s a modern-day saint; we hold her in such high esteem, we find it difficult to imagine how very human she was. I admire the courage Mary had to muster in order to claim a God of unfolding love over the God of rules within Mother Teresa’s order.
AN UNQUENCHABLE THIRST traces Mary’s twenty years in the order in terrific (sometimes excruciating) detail. I disliked myself at times while reading this book; I was turning pages to get the dirt on Mother Teresa more than to follow Mary’s journey. Perhaps this wasn’t my fault. I frequently wished Mary would abandon the close narration of events for a more reflective stance. I wanted to know what she thinks and feels about these events NOW. For example, there’s one scene where she confronts her superior for hitting children in their care that occurs not far from scenes of the nuns using the “discipline,” meaning flagellating themselves and cinching chains around their arms. I wanted a narrator to draw connections between the two forms of physical punishment and the theology implicit in both. Without this meaning-making, the book reads like a thriller.
Nonetheless, I’m glad to have read it. Few contemporary authors portray the spiritual life with such honesty and accuracy.
Confession, by Leo Tolstoy
I’m so excited to discover this little window into Tolstoy’s faith! How have I missed it? I love his commonsensical approach to faith: Start from bare experience; pay attention to what works–that is, what gives meaning to life–and from there draw conclusions about the nature of God and the place of the church. Faith is a response to the questions of life (64), not a social construct or a proscribed creed. I wish more writers laid bare their inner struggles with such clarity.
“But I do want to understand in order that I might be brought to the inevitably incomprehensible; I want all that is incomprehensible to be such not because the demands of the intellect are not sound (they are sound, and apart from them I understand nothing) but because I perceive the limits of the intellect. I want to understand, so that any instance of the incomprehensible occurs as a necessity of reason and not as an obligation to believe.”
–Tolstoy, Confession, 91
