Some books enrich culture.
Today, we look at those that won’t.
Milk : A Novel, Darcey Steinke (Bloomsbury USA)
Why it might be bad: Characters include a word-slamming poet and a pedophilic priest. Sentences include “what [word-slammng] Mary wanted was technically impossible: to feel God’s touch physically manifested.” But Western civilization doesn’t need more rape-fantasies about God from girls named Mary.
Chronicles of Ancient Darkness #1: Wolf Brother, Michelle Paver (HarperCollins)
Why it might be bad: An Amazon.com customer review likens the book’s sensibility to “the blackface minstrel show/stage Oirish/Me Tonto school of bad Hollywood racial and cultural stereotypes.” Another reader calls it “an utterly cynical exercise to cash in,” and notes its reliance on New Age phrases like “world spirit.”
Joshua in a Troubled World : A Story for Our Time, Joseph Girzone (Doubleday)
Why it might be bad: It stars a modern-day Jesus Christ who, while evading brutish FBI agents, finds the time to convince Sharon and Arafat to draft and sign a new Oslo Declaration. And, then, there’s this review, from the usually amiable PW: “The characters are one-dimensional, the dialogue is stilted, the plot is tedious and the conclusion is entirely predictable.”