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howiesbookclub's review
4.0
Early on in the book I was delighted by a gentle (and sometimes not) skewering of many LDS tropes I remember from my youth. And much of it resonated with me down to my very bones. Some of the things I was taught as a kid in church I now consider genuinely damaging to adult life and I've seen firsthand how it can be absolutely devastating to victims of sexual assault and abuse, to name just one example. I was grimly amused by a teen girl's complaint that while she was given multiple handouts about how to prepare to be a perfect and pure wife, the boys her age were playing basketball in the gym. The assumption being that men had little to aspire to other than church service and jobs, while women had a complex code of domestic perfection and femininity that needed intensive training. A scene where the Bradley mother, Claire, just destroys one of Mormon culture's worst object lessons by indulging in some ABC gum in front of a young women's teacher is pretty priceless.
At times the portrayals veer toward caricatures, especially when given the limited handful of side characters the Bradley family deals with. But I don't necessarily have a problem with that. Fiction (and often nonfiction) distills characters to their most concentrated forms. Timelines compress. In one book we're shown every bad example and painful church lesson an adult has experienced over a lifetime taking place within just a few weeks of time for the Bradleys. That's a reasonable writing technique, but it's worth recognizing.
There are only just a few ward members (for the uninitiated, wards are another word for local congregations) that we meet, and they are all broad stereotypes. There is one "cool" Mormon leader who gives out Kit-Kats and one time takes his shirt off and spins it around his head during a rugby game and everyone is kind of shocked but also amused. But aside from him, it's a rogues gallery of the weirdos every LDS person meets on their journey of holding fast to the iron rod. The doomsday prepper, the "old maid" who is approaching 30 and is still unmarried, the purity obsessed young women's leader. The Bradleys unfortunately carry the brunt of the responsibility to show that Mormons can be normal and funny and sometimes awful and trying their very best but failing most of the time.
Honestly, I think that Bray pulls as many punches as she delivers. And there are real or at least perceived miracles that happen here. Prayers are answered, though in ways not anticipated (a very, very Mormon kind of thing to happen), and the boring conclusion I was anticipating -- a wholesale abandoning of the faith by the Bradley family -- doesn't happen. I think there's fondness in Bray's portrayal of her culture (she says she left the church at age 30, replacing it with writing), even though she has a hefty amount of anger about the lessons she learned. One online reviewer, post-gremlin transformation, called the book "preachy."
In short, I think Bray does a fantastic job of preserving a near exact portrayal of the experience of being a Mormon teen the same time that I was a Mormon teen. I was amazed at how similar the experience was in the UK compared to my Utah upbringing. I have a hunch that, similar to my experience in Mexico, sometimes Mormons in other countries were even more zealous in some ways due to being a tiny minority. I felt sometimes they had a chip on their shoulder to prove to us Utah missionaries how hard they can Mormon. This accuracy is so uncanny that the handful of times when it seems to get something fundamentally wrong, it was jarring. The problem is that Bray stopped watching The Mormon Show several seasons ago, never got caught up, and wrote a thinkpiece about it anyway.
This book is what it feels like to be Mormon in the 90s perfectly, but it's set in the 2010s, and that's a problem. At one point, someone quotes a passage from a church lesson manual from 1993, and Claire points out that the manual is outdated, that a lot can happen in twenty years. The lesson teacher points out that the church is the same today as it was yesterday. This is a very common Mormon refrain and patently false. I wish that Bray had taken her own advice. The church is in many ways massively different than it was when I grew up in it. I would argue that in most ways it's for the better.
The way church leaders teach about mental illness, for example, is vastly different than the portrayal in the book, even if it feels more or less in line with my experience from a couple of decades ago. I remember a mother who suffered from profound depression who was viewed more or less as having a personality flaw. Depression was often viewed as the result of unresolved sin. Obviously that's horrible, and there has been massive amounts of progress on that front since. Church leaders today offer referrals to therapists, and will even pay for it out of member donations. In General Conference meetings (our twice-yearly world-wide church meetings), mental illness is spoken about frankly and kindly. In my volunteering I work with phenomenal LDS therapists who are fluent in both modern research and the intricacies and complications of religion.
Does that mean that people from my generation and before don't still harbor and believe the things we were taught before? Nah. There are still problems. But not in the monolithic form that is portrayed in A Song for Issy Bradley. The same goes for some of the horrible lessons young women were taught about personal purity. Those manuals are no longer in use, and since I spent some time teaching young men and women in church, I can say that the topics are handled with much more maturity and sensitivity now.
It would be blindly optimistic, even for me, to assume that these lessons still don't find their way into discussions on Sundays, because those kinds of habits die hard. But they are dying. Because Bray has apparently been out of the loop for some time, she understandably misses some stuff. It's obvious especially when her 2014-or-so Mormons aren't talking about the things that are really dividing members right now, especially the teens she writes about. There is a quantifiable exodus of young Mormons from the church that has little to do with the subjects Bray brings up. Millennials are leaving the church (all churches, actually) often because of a divide between their personal conscience and the views of the church on social issues. There's some pretty good red meat there for a critic of the LDS faith to explore. Instead Bray focuses on the things that apparently bothered her when she was young.
The rest of this review is posted on my blog at http://www.howiesbookclub.com
At times the portrayals veer toward caricatures, especially when given the limited handful of side characters the Bradley family deals with. But I don't necessarily have a problem with that. Fiction (and often nonfiction) distills characters to their most concentrated forms. Timelines compress. In one book we're shown every bad example and painful church lesson an adult has experienced over a lifetime taking place within just a few weeks of time for the Bradleys. That's a reasonable writing technique, but it's worth recognizing.
There are only just a few ward members (for the uninitiated, wards are another word for local congregations) that we meet, and they are all broad stereotypes. There is one "cool" Mormon leader who gives out Kit-Kats and one time takes his shirt off and spins it around his head during a rugby game and everyone is kind of shocked but also amused. But aside from him, it's a rogues gallery of the weirdos every LDS person meets on their journey of holding fast to the iron rod. The doomsday prepper, the "old maid" who is approaching 30 and is still unmarried, the purity obsessed young women's leader. The Bradleys unfortunately carry the brunt of the responsibility to show that Mormons can be normal and funny and sometimes awful and trying their very best but failing most of the time.
Honestly, I think that Bray pulls as many punches as she delivers. And there are real or at least perceived miracles that happen here. Prayers are answered, though in ways not anticipated (a very, very Mormon kind of thing to happen), and the boring conclusion I was anticipating -- a wholesale abandoning of the faith by the Bradley family -- doesn't happen. I think there's fondness in Bray's portrayal of her culture (she says she left the church at age 30, replacing it with writing), even though she has a hefty amount of anger about the lessons she learned. One online reviewer, post-gremlin transformation, called the book "preachy."
In short, I think Bray does a fantastic job of preserving a near exact portrayal of the experience of being a Mormon teen the same time that I was a Mormon teen. I was amazed at how similar the experience was in the UK compared to my Utah upbringing. I have a hunch that, similar to my experience in Mexico, sometimes Mormons in other countries were even more zealous in some ways due to being a tiny minority. I felt sometimes they had a chip on their shoulder to prove to us Utah missionaries how hard they can Mormon. This accuracy is so uncanny that the handful of times when it seems to get something fundamentally wrong, it was jarring. The problem is that Bray stopped watching The Mormon Show several seasons ago, never got caught up, and wrote a thinkpiece about it anyway.
This book is what it feels like to be Mormon in the 90s perfectly, but it's set in the 2010s, and that's a problem. At one point, someone quotes a passage from a church lesson manual from 1993, and Claire points out that the manual is outdated, that a lot can happen in twenty years. The lesson teacher points out that the church is the same today as it was yesterday. This is a very common Mormon refrain and patently false. I wish that Bray had taken her own advice. The church is in many ways massively different than it was when I grew up in it. I would argue that in most ways it's for the better.
The way church leaders teach about mental illness, for example, is vastly different than the portrayal in the book, even if it feels more or less in line with my experience from a couple of decades ago. I remember a mother who suffered from profound depression who was viewed more or less as having a personality flaw. Depression was often viewed as the result of unresolved sin. Obviously that's horrible, and there has been massive amounts of progress on that front since. Church leaders today offer referrals to therapists, and will even pay for it out of member donations. In General Conference meetings (our twice-yearly world-wide church meetings), mental illness is spoken about frankly and kindly. In my volunteering I work with phenomenal LDS therapists who are fluent in both modern research and the intricacies and complications of religion.
Does that mean that people from my generation and before don't still harbor and believe the things we were taught before? Nah. There are still problems. But not in the monolithic form that is portrayed in A Song for Issy Bradley. The same goes for some of the horrible lessons young women were taught about personal purity. Those manuals are no longer in use, and since I spent some time teaching young men and women in church, I can say that the topics are handled with much more maturity and sensitivity now.
It would be blindly optimistic, even for me, to assume that these lessons still don't find their way into discussions on Sundays, because those kinds of habits die hard. But they are dying. Because Bray has apparently been out of the loop for some time, she understandably misses some stuff. It's obvious especially when her 2014-or-so Mormons aren't talking about the things that are really dividing members right now, especially the teens she writes about. There is a quantifiable exodus of young Mormons from the church that has little to do with the subjects Bray brings up. Millennials are leaving the church (all churches, actually) often because of a divide between their personal conscience and the views of the church on social issues. There's some pretty good red meat there for a critic of the LDS faith to explore. Instead Bray focuses on the things that apparently bothered her when she was young.
The rest of this review is posted on my blog at http://www.howiesbookclub.com
perri's review
4.0
I was initially confused about the setting,-I had just assumed that LDS members lived in the states, and didn't get why they were using UK language. But of course if they are out on missions, they convert some of the natives or settle down in a new place. One reason I like reading-to expand my narrow world. Anyway, the best part of the story is how the author makes each member of a family come alive as they respond differently to a heartbreaking loss.
lisagray68's review
3.0
3.5 stars if Good reads would allow. I have a lot of Mormon friends and am interested in Mormon practice and history, so this story about a Mormon family who loses a little girl and wrestles with their faith was very interesting to me. I couldn't help but wonder if people who don't know anything about being Mormon would be a little mystified by this book, though. I don't know if the average reader knows what a big deal it would be to be released from your bishop calling, or to not practice Family Home Evening. I will look forward to reading more from this author.
pgchuis's review
4.0
3.5* rounded up.
Ian is a Mormon bishop, married to Claire, who converted after she met him. They have three children and the youngest, Issy, dies of meningitis at the beginning of the story. Each of the characters grieves in their own way, but all of their behaviour and decisions are supposed to be regulated by their Mormon faith.
I thought the first half of this novel was excellent. Zipporah's efforts to accommodate her attraction to Adam, whom she could only marry after his two years of mission was particularly well done and Adam's character generally was excellent. All the scenes at church where the girls were encouraged to plan their weddings and the boys played sports were appalling and fascinating. Ian's prioritizing the demands of his congregation over the needs of his family (as his own parents modelled) was heart-breaking.
However, I couldn't really get to grips with Claire's decisions. Did she really accept everything about the Mormon faith so easily? Did she really want Zipporah to marry young and concentrate on the home and popping out babies? There were flashbacks to Claire not really wanting four children and she speaks out about repentance and forgiveness being more important than shaming, but on the whole she seemed determined to assimilate and accept the culture. Did she really love Ian (a man with no personality whatsoever) that much?
I wanted there to be a less open ending. I wanted Ian to ask forgiveness for his neglect, thoughtlessness and focus on appearances rather than honesty. I wanted Zipporah to go off to university and have a fulfilling career and forget all about marriage. I wanted Al to change his name by deed poll and become a football player after all. I wanted Claire to say, "I should have checked on Issy more carefully earlier and then she might not have died, but you, Ian, left me in the lurch and I was busy making up for your broken promises to Jacob."
Ian is a Mormon bishop, married to Claire, who converted after she met him. They have three children and the youngest, Issy, dies of meningitis at the beginning of the story. Each of the characters grieves in their own way, but all of their behaviour and decisions are supposed to be regulated by their Mormon faith.
I thought the first half of this novel was excellent. Zipporah's efforts to accommodate her attraction to Adam, whom she could only marry after his two years of mission was particularly well done and Adam's character generally was excellent. All the scenes at church where the girls were encouraged to plan their weddings and the boys played sports were appalling and fascinating. Ian's prioritizing the demands of his congregation over the needs of his family (as his own parents modelled) was heart-breaking.
However, I couldn't really get to grips with Claire's decisions. Did she really accept everything about the Mormon faith so easily? Did she really want Zipporah to marry young and concentrate on the home and popping out babies? There were flashbacks to Claire not really wanting four children and she speaks out about repentance and forgiveness being more important than shaming, but on the whole she seemed determined to assimilate and accept the culture. Did she really love Ian (a man with no personality whatsoever) that much?
I wanted there to be a less open ending. I wanted Ian to ask forgiveness for his neglect, thoughtlessness and focus on appearances rather than honesty. I wanted Zipporah to go off to university and have a fulfilling career and forget all about marriage. I wanted Al to change his name by deed poll and become a football player after all. I wanted Claire to say, "I should have checked on Issy more carefully earlier and then she might not have died, but you, Ian, left me in the lurch and I was busy making up for your broken promises to Jacob."
lnatal's review
1.0
From BBC Radio 4 Extra - Book at Bedtime:
Moving story of what happens when Issy Bradley dies.
Enough is enough!! This is not my cup of tea. NEXT!!
Moving story of what happens when Issy Bradley dies.
Enough is enough!! This is not my cup of tea. NEXT!!
barrynorton's review
3.0
An interestingly personal story from an ex-Mormon, but an unsatisfying conclusion as she seemed to try to avoid too much autobiography (rendering the main adult female character unresolved). Curious to see if she has another story in her.
dilema's review
4.0
This reminded me a lot of THE HOLE WE'RE IN except with more hope. And of course, the religion. But it was a portrait of a family and the cracks within the perfect outside. All the various plots came together well, and there's very real critique of the Mormon church in there as well while also demonstration of why people join and stay--admittedly, I'm not Mormom and thus take zero offense at any of the criticisms, but the author has her background, so I have zero issues with this critique.. I laughed at poor Al putting the money in the microwave! A lovely look at grief and how we process it.
caidyn's review
Thank you to NetGalley and Random House for allowing me to read this.
I don't know a lot about being Mormon since I'm atheist, but nothing I hate more than forcing values on children. Such as telling them that no one will want you if you have sex. That's where I drew the line, and that was, sadly, 10% in. Really, I don't want to read about things like that even though I know that's the religion. It just turned me off because I have no want to read things like that. Even when the mother was awesome and showed up the Sister. Still, I knew that religion would be a huge part of the book and I had no real need for a book like that right now.
I don't know a lot about being Mormon since I'm atheist, but nothing I hate more than forcing values on children. Such as telling them that no one will want you if you have sex. That's where I drew the line, and that was, sadly, 10% in. Really, I don't want to read about things like that even though I know that's the religion. It just turned me off because I have no want to read things like that. Even when the mother was awesome and showed up the Sister. Still, I knew that religion would be a huge part of the book and I had no real need for a book like that right now.