A Sense of Order and Other Stories
Jack Harrell
Signature Books, 2010
Hardcover, 220 pages
This isn’t a formal book review—more like a brief and somewhat elusive personal response. Writing a thorough review right now would be tricky, given my shortage of minutes and brain cells in the face of looming holiday chaos. More importantly, I’m not much inclined to intellectually analyze books that mean so much to me. Not everyone will appreciate Harrell’s writing style and philosophical approach, and even those who do might find the collection satisfying yet unremarkable, but for me, this book is special.
I’m not sure I can adequately express why. Maybe because Harrell so skillfully reveals and explores the essential dualities of life without trying to resolve them. Maybe because many of these dualities — the blurry boundaries of good and evil, the vulnerability in human love, the mingled hope and despair of mortality — have long been particular issues of mine, and finding them in Harrell’s sixteen stories was like meeting old friends in a new place. Maybe because this year I’ve grappled with these issues in ways I never expected, and can’t help but love a book that acts as both mirror and window to my experience.
Personal significance aside, this anthology is a gift to readers who enjoy probing the intersection of natural and supernatural, and who strengthen their faith in part by overturning assumptions about how it works. In Harrell’s view, the divine order found on earth is largely inscrutable. Truth is found in contradiction; God’s benevolent hand brings complications. And our tainted mortal desires have frightening power, especially when we try to understand what cannot be understood. As Robert Bird notes in the introduction, “Meaning acquired through metaphysical testing may not be as valuable as the human relationships it might destroy.”
It’s not a flawless book. Some stories feel underdeveloped (and not just because of length), some images are overused (the night sky, the Idaho wind), and some unpredictable elements soon become predictable (the morally ambiguous stranger, for one). And there’s a kind of awkwardness to the collection—the ties between stories are strong enough to suggest interconnection, yet not strong enough to make them parts of a comfortable whole. As the stories gathered in my mind I wanted them to more cleanly fit together or stand alone. Yet such tension only underscores one of the book’s central themes: God doesn’t work in tidy boxes.
My further thoughts are too convoluted to be useful and perhaps too personal to share. This only strengthens my recommendation. But I don’t want to conclude without offering a summation of sorts, so here’s one, from my recent email to the author:
Jack, just finished reading. God is amazing. Life is amazing. Truth is amazing.
Well done, sir.
Want to hear more? Read the publisher’s blurb, a newspaper review and a story excerpt.
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