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Saturday 26 May 2012

A pilgrim’s progress for the 21st century

Mary Wakefield talks to the author William P. Young, whose self-published religious novel has astounded the publishing world and sold nearly two million copies

‘Have you ever loved a book so much you figured it must have been written just for you? I simply can’t thank you enough, William Young,’ says heavyheart20.

How did it all begin? ‘Good Gordon, I don’t know,’ says Young. ‘I mean I’ve always written — poetry, short stories and stuff — but this one time my wife said, you know what? I think it would be kinda good for the children if you wrote about life, about God, about suffering. So I did. The Shack is a book about the nature of God as I see it, written for my kids.’ It’s not an absolute natural for children, I say, cautiously (the first part of the book describes the kidnap and brutal murder of our hero Mack’s five-year-old daughter). Paul laughs: ‘No, but I figured the worst possible situation would allow me to ask the best possible questions: who is this God really? Why does He allow suffering? Is He trustworthy?’

Did you suspect, when you were writing it, that you might be on to a winner? In the silence that follows I get the impression I’ve missed the point. ‘OK, you have to understand how little I take credit for it,’ says Young. ‘I mean, sure, I wrote it, but good Gordon [his voice rises from growl to squeak] you know, I am so in way over my head! In the best sort of way!’ By which he means, I think, that it’s God who’s pushing sales.

Another explanation is of course that the US has a bottomless appetite for spiritual self-help: the more horribly sugary the better. But though Paul is not quite C.S. Lewis, and his prose style is sometimes pretty sickly, the book is curiously effective. And though The Shack is a God book, it’s also a very odd book. It’s not stock shlock. The Almighty turns out to be a fat black lady called ‘Papa’. (‘To reveal myself to you as a white grand-father with a flowing beard would simply reinforce your religious stereotypes,’ She says.) Jesus is short and ugly and the Holy Spirit is Chinese.

More articles from: Mary Wakefield | this section

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