The Shack
The Shack
By William P. Young
Windblown Media, 2007
Review by Carl McColman
There’s a fair amount of hype surrounding this slender work of independently-published Christian fiction from first-time author William P. Young. Eugene Peterson (of The Message fame) gushes that it could be the Pilgrim’s Progress of our generation. My own friend Mike Morrell (who first told me about the book) says “If you read one work of fiction this year, let this be it.”
Well… for once I’m happy to join in the chorus.
First, as a reviewer I feel obliged to make an initial disclaimer. This is a religious novel and needs to be appreciated as such. In other words, the novel supports the theological lesson contained within it (and not the other way around). This is not J.R.R. Tolkien or Flannery O’Connor, folks. But what I’m happy to note is that it’s actually quite a good read, as such novels go. After all, the most well known novels-with-a-message tend to be, well, pretty awful when judged on purely literary terms (think The Celestine Prophecy or The DaVinci Code). By comparison, The Shack truly shines. (more…)
