What’s the fun of having a little power if you don’t abuse it? Especially if you’re a teenager. If you’ve served in one of the youth presidencies in a Mormon ward, you probably think they don’t really have the authority to shape policy in any original or interesting way, but…
Category: Book Review
The latest from the marvelous pen of Johnny Townsend!
If you like short stories and you’re interested in the lives of Mormons, you should be following the work of Johnny Townsend. Since he writes from an ex-Mormon perspective, believers often dismiss Townsend’s work as biased — or as a priori “an attack on the church” — but I think…
Family and Death in Mormon Britain: Carys Bray’s “A Song for Issy Bradley”
A little girl lies dying in her bed as her family bustles about their individual activities. Once it’s too late, all of the other members of the family are left with reasons to blame themselves — any one of them could have made slightly different choices and prevented the child’s…
Review of City of Brick and Shadow
The novel by Tim Wirkus, City of Brick and Shadow, is a riveting tale of two missionaries in a sweeping Brazilian slum looking for a missing congregant they had recently baptized. All the characters are well-realized, from the unhappy local Mormons to the woman at the lanchonete to the mysterious…
An Ode to Life and Love: “Free Electricity” by Ryan Rhodes
Everything was suddenly different, but what had just happened would not fall into place in my mind. The circuitry had never been laid for this — like learning a foreign language. The verbs were reversed with the nouns and the vowels were crashing into the consonants and every adverb and…
What should I do?: Johnny Townsend’s “Behind the Zion Curtain”
With all big problems in this world, it’s easy to feel small — like there’s nothing you can do to make a dent in any of them — and wonder whether your life has any value. Religion to the rescue, right? Well, not exactly. The CoJCoL-dS can provide answers to…
What part of Mormonism is in you?: Johnny Townsend’s “A Day at the Temple”
Mormonism is a complicated thing. Whether you’re in it or whether you’ve extracted yourself from it, there are bits of Mormon belief and culture that you can’t stand, and other bits that you can’t shake. Sometimes it’s the same bits. And its always a little different from one person to…
“Selling the City of Enoch” by Johnny Townsend
Johnny Townsend has done it again. He’s delivered more deliciously subversive Mormon fiction in his delightful new collection, Selling the City of Enoch. As in his previous works, Townsend’s well-drawn characters are too complex to fit into the Mormon cookie-cutter mold. For example, the overly curious Sister Covino who can’t…
Through Abuse and out: Todd Maxwell Preston’s “Sacred Road”
My father was sexually abused as a boy. I found this out when I was thirty-five years old. Was I shocked? Not really – he was raised with violence and abuse, in a very dysfunctional system. The abuse was accepted as normal, I get that now. The fact that it…
Dragons of the Book of Mormon by Johnny Townsend
In his new collection of short stories, Dragons of the Book of Mormon, Johnny Townsend introduces compelling, sympathetic, and at times, hilarious characters struggling to live simultaneously within the rigid structure of Mormonism, the real world, and, in some cases, the magical world inspired by Mormon doctrine. In “Going Home,