A review by waffel113
Hell Is a World Without You by Jason Kirk

challenging emotional funny hopeful reflective tense medium-paced
  • Plot- or character-driven? A mix
  • Strong character development? Yes
  • Loveable characters? It's complicated
  • Diverse cast of characters? Yes
  • Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes

5.0

Maybe nobody's beyond hope. Literally nobody. Alive, dead, or otherwise.

I didn't grow up religious. My parents tried, every now and then, to make us churchgoers, but it never stuck. Generally, our exposure was limited to the halftime sermons at my little brother's church league basketball games and the occasional week-long church camp that we stopped attending by the time I was halfway through middle school. But something about the church - organized religion, really - fascinated me; the complete certainty in things unseen has a certain appeal, even to someone who couldn't help second-guessing every move. One of my best friends is a devout believer, and there were times - especially once I started attending a religious school - that I wanted (or thought I wanted, at least) to give myself over to the mystery as they have. One night at a campus function, I tried so hard to feel something in a chapel full of the faithful. And as I sat by a swimming pool later that night, watching my classmates reaffirm their commitment to Christ or form a new covenant, I couldn't shake the feeling that something had been lost forever when I came up empty, a world I would never have access to.

Jason Kirk comes from that world; in his author bio, he says he grew up a "maximum-effort Southern Baptist and is now a lazy Christian pantheist." And his extraordinary debut novel, Hell Is a World Without You, accomplishes the difficult feat of making that insular world legible, recognizable, even, to a lifelong outsider. It's the story of Isaac Siena Jr., who, when we meet him at the turn of the 21st century, is "13.9," devoutly born-again, and still mourning his unsaved father, who died under mysterious circumstances years ago and who he's been taught to believe has been burning in Hell ever since. Tormented by guilt (depicted as a voice in his head that usually keeps its intrusions to a bluntly hilarious "REGRET!" whenever Isaac doubts or, worse, has impure thoughts), the next four years of his life lead him to question and challenge everything he once thought to be unshakably true.

So, yes, this is in many ways an "exvangelical" novel, and oftentimes a righteously angry one. A crucial early turning point in the novel is the decision by Jack, the pastor at Isaac's church, to embrace Christian nationalism in the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, and the indoctrination of shame, self-hatred, purity culture, and worse weighs heavily on Isaac and his group of youth group misfits - among them the pastor's niece, Sophie; the church golden boy, Josiah; and the brash, unapologetic outcast, Alexa. Kirk depicts the effects of this unflinchingly: there are two harrowing sequences where Isaac is brought to the brink of self-destruction that have stuck in my psyche for days on end, and that's to say nothing of the plotline following Eli, Isaac's fire-and-brimstone older brother whose devotion to saving souls (and lifelong regret over an incident from his own youth) takes a devastating toll on the Siena family.

I fear I'm making this book sound dour, or even worse, preachy. Never fear: those who have followed Kirk for years on the Shutdown Fullcast or his own Vacation Bible School podcast know his sense of humor is as sharp as a sacrificial blade. Through lovingly recreated AOL Instant Messenger chatrooms, the occasional dose of low-hanging, pubescent jokes, and "if you know, you know" cracks about the likes of Audio Adrenaline, dc Talk, and Carman, Kirk locates a rich, necessary vein of laughs in a narrative that might have in other hands grown too dark to bear. His writerly voice, too, is in full flower, fully and convincingly inhabiting Isaac's consciousness as he matures, falters, craters and eventually pulls himself back together.

This is a funny book, then, sometimes riotously so - the punchline to one particular AOL segment forced me to stop reading because I was laughing too hard to keep going. But even when he goes for laughs, Kirk refuses to abandon Isaac or anybody else to easy condescension - his, ours, or God's. Though some of what he depicts of this world is absurd (my favorite detail: the indistinguishable mass of younger boys who look up to Isaac when he takes on a leadership role in youth group, all of whom are named Caleb.), it's never done with an "oh, but we know better" wink to the audience or a sense of looking down upon these characters for their faith. He takes the spirituality of his characters, and their doubts, fears, and failings, and treats it all with end-of-the-world seriousness because to them, they are the end of the world; to them, these are life-and-death, souls-at-stake, where-will-you-spend-eternity questions with no easy answers. This is a book of radical, profound empathy, one that ultimately dares to believe that a better tomorrow is possible if we have the courage to confront the darkness, and one which rocked me to my core. Isn't all that what the Bible is supposed to teach in the first place?
Expand filter menu Content Warnings