By Simon Parke
Hodder & Stoughton. 166 pages. £5.99
ISBN 0 340 69412 2
Jenny Jewel is reinventing herself from radical stand-up comic to quirky TV presenter. She goes to the monastery of St. Raphael's, situated halfway up Mount Sinai, next to the Burning Bush! Jenny's purpose is to make the next programme in a series called 'Blackpool it isn't' which takes a sideways look at God, history and the desert. What was meant to a comedy developed in other directions! What went wrong? Was it the drunk psychologists, the skulls, the men in black dresses, the sexual innuendoes in the library, the Strict Baptists from Bournemouth, Poirot, Van Gogh, or the search for a child?
Yes, in 166 pages, all these things feature in a novel about lists which sort out absolutely nothing.
This is an allegory for those who have loved and lost when, despite being torn apart by pain, they are trying to love again.
Simon Parke writes in an irreverent, racy style. The book is a journey through the cynical despair of post-modernism to - I'm not sure what! I was disappointed to read a Christian novel which contained bad language, blasphemy and sexual innuendo on many of its pages and, on those grounds alone, I would be reluctant to recommend it.
