I found the story line in Bishop in the West Wing to be very thin. The central problem of the poltergeists in the White House is brought up from time to time to string it all together, but it seems an afterthought. The true purpose of this novel seems to be to recount Father Greeley's visits to the White House during the Clinton administration, with Blackie playing the part of Greeley and President McGurn as President Clinton. While I would be interested in reading about that subject, I would prefer it in a nonfiction text, as opposed to under the guide of fiction. Having Republicans as a group stereotyped as hate-spewing elists, as they are in this book, is no more fair than stereotyping all Catholic priests as pedophiles, which they are most certainly not. Also, there is a real Rasputin-ish quality to the part that Blackie plays in the White House in this novel. Am I the only one who noticed this?

I was bothered by Father Greeley's characterizations of teenage girls in this novel, as I have been in his past novels. It seems especially evident in Bishop in the West Wing. He portrays them as modern-day "Valley Girls", with ditzy personalities and brainless slang used in every sentence. When one conducts a conversation with most teenage girls and young women, I believe one will find that most of them, especially those of the type Father Greeley is representing in his novels, speak much like the rest of us. I won't even get started on the "ebonics" he imposed on a high-level African-American White House aide in the book.

I am hoping that this novel is an abberation in the Blackie Ryan series, and not a sign of things to come in future novels. Despite the negative tone of this review, I would still nonetheless recommend this novel to Blackie fans such as myself (hence the two stars instead of one). Blackie is a fun, clever character, and spending some time in his world is always an escape from our own. Just hold your nose in parts and pray that Father Greeley will juice things up in the next Blackie novel.

Unable to mount more than a weak argument to remain in the Windy city, Blackie travels to Washington DC upon the orders of his superior Cardinal Cronin. Blackie quickly concludes that the ghost is more likely a young female suffering from unrequited love or vengeance against a President detested by his enemies as he begins eliminating the candidates one at a time.

THE BISHOP IN THE WEST WING is the best Blackie Ryan novel in several years as Andrew M. Greeley provides insight into the White House from a guest's perspective while satirizing the seemingly endless attacks on Bill Clinton, obviously Jack's model. The story line is fun for everyone except right wing Republicans and the so-called liberal "muckraking" press as Blackie looks for a more mundane solution to the poltergeist question. Father Greeley makes no bones about his feelings towards the previous president with an engaging amateur sleuth tale that Mr. Clinton and many other fans will enjoy.

Harriet Klausner

"The Abomination" is a hugely ambitious first novel by an author of great promise. Paul Golding is a master wordsmith with an uncanny ear for dialogue and a gift for characterization. That the novel, ultimately, fails to cohere, is due to Golding's miscalculation in assembling it in two parts. Part one, which is set in contemporary London and includes a devastatingly exact portrait of gay club life, introduces the reader to its first-person narrator, for the time being unnamed, who is toying with the idea of a tryst with Dave, the slightly older male prostitute whose personal ad he finds in a men's contact magazine: "Big Uncut Man. Handsome, lean, muscular, mature, trustworthy." The outcome of that affair is left "hanging" as the narrative shifts to Santiago's (our hero's name is Santiago Moore Zamora) privileged childhood on an unidentified Spanish island, as the son of a British ex-public school boy and his ravishingly beautiful Spanish wife. All of the right Freudian strings are plucked, and there is even an ex-nanny that the child has become fixated on, but there is little in his life, graced as it is by wealth and social standing, that makes "Iago," as his mother calls him, particularly sympathetic. In fact, he seems to be a bit of a whiner. When his father-the villain in the piece--packs Iago off to his former Catholic boarding school in England, Santiago Zamora becomes James Moore, and it is in this guise that he has long-term affairs, first with a young teacher named Wolfe, who tells the linguistically challenged James that he is a "bisection," and then with his music teacher, Mr. Fox. There is little sense of exploitation here, as James, even at age nine, is essentially the controller in both affairs. But there is an implication that James' parents, who are admittedly shallow and materialistic, are somehow the authors of their son's turpitude. Perhaps it is his eagerness to seek refuge from the taunts of his fellow students-they call him "woman"--with such weak and unremarkable men that leads to James' self-loathing in the frame story, but the connection is not made clear. However, there are some wonderfully realized set-pieces that more than compensate for the novel's structural weakness, including the story of James' only friendship at school (with a boy named Cross, who later betrays him) and the description of his last appearance (one he describes in terms of humiliation, rather than triumph) among his classmates, in flapper drag, before he leaves to attend Oxford. James presents himself to the reader in all candor as a self-pitying ingrate and a snob, with his icy mother as his primary role model, but he is not without a sense of self-worth. And that's what makes his infatuation with Dave, a mere phone number from the back of a magazine, whom he must pay money to be with, all the more puzzling. Does he honestly hope for love from such an impersonal source? The fifteen years between James' graduation from public school and his encounter with Dave are only hinted at. Golding asks a lot if he intends his readers to fill in the gap themselves. Writers as diverse as Orwell and Robert Graves have written unflinchingly of the English public school system, with its honor codes and institutionalized homosexuality; Golding's novel falls in that tradition. I only wish he had spent less time at school and more in the bars, where his story breaks fresher ground.

This is one of the most exciting and intelligent debuts in gay fiction since Alan Hollinghurst's THE SWIMMING-POOL LIBRARY, and the two works can be justly compared. Golding's James Moore and Hollinghurst's William Beckwith share much in common: in their expensive British educations, their sexual promiscuities, and their savage snobbism. But whereas Hollinghurst attempted to critique his protagonist's character via context (showing how obtuse beckwith was to anything but himself or his pleasures), Golding more convincingly and bravely allows his protagonist's lurid furies to stand as a more direct means of critiquing his excesses. The novel's framework, though interesting (showing an adult James becoming enamored of a male prostitute, and primping himself elaborately before their hired tryst), perhaps does not come across wholly as Golding intends: we seem to lose a good deal of understanding as to what has happened to Moore in the intervening fifteen years between leaving for Oxford and the framing sequence that needs elaboration. Still, the debut is magnificent; this may be the best new gay novel to come down the pike in years.

Incidentally, I see no "attacks" by "good christians" in the reviews below. I do see misspelled and grammatically unfit attacks on this book by people who pretend to have read it. This sort of thing comes from an anger that is foreign to Taoism or Christianity, and is saddening. If either tradition were better understood among the populace, this sort of attitude might be less prevalent. As it is, the importance of the book is hardly affected by such outbursts. I think the negative reviews recommend the book even more. Ponder this...

An excellent and healing book. It AMAZES me to see the viturperative reviews of this book by supposed followers of the Tao; maybe you ought to re-read the Tao Te Ching, and listen this time. In a few years, maybe you'll get it. After all, "the way that can be told...." Still, we are sisters and brothers, so its all in good fun.

Similar to the ways in which Christianity has been enriched by its contact with Zen Buddhism over the past century (and vice versa), this book points out the obvious points of contact between these two traditions as well. It is a wonderful book in the spirit of Butcher's "Tao of Jesus," Steindl-Rast and Aitken's "The Ground We Share," and Merton's "Way of Chuang-tzu." David (see below) from New Mexico is why this book was written, friends: to strip away misconceptions and to bring healing to the hurting in both of our traditions. Modern Taoism in East Asia suffers from shamanism and demonology (and in the USA from yuppies and undergraduate religion majors...), and modern Christianity suffers from rabid fundamentalism. Both need to hear the words of the other, as Buddhism has gained a social aspect from Christianity (witness the "engaged Buddhism" in the West) and as Christianity has gained immensely from the Buddhist concept of emptiness and fullness.

The Tao is just the Tao--no Christian Tao, no Buddhist Tao, no Muslim Tao. Tao is Tao--the Way is just the Way. Do we have a Taoist sun, a Jewish moon, a Muslim cloud or two? No. We have what we have. Let's make the best of it. To say where the Tao "is" and "is not" is to miss the Tao.

Pax.

In fact calling it a "study" probably does not do proper justice to the beauty and originality of this work. It is rather an intuitive and profound meditation on the mystery of the Logos in its Taoist "incarnation". Its originality is such that there is little to compare it with in recent publication history. The closest works to it might be Raimundo Pannikar's The Hidden Christ of Hinduism or Ravi Ravindra's Christ the Yogi: A Hindu Reflection on the Gospel of John, but even in the company of these superb studies, Christ the Eternal Tao stands out as something decidedly different, even unique. For one thing, the author is not only a monk and a theologian, he is also an accomplished poet. Indeed, the first section of the book is itself a Christian commentary in verse on the Tao Te Ching of Lao Tzu. The last time the Christian theological world saw anything like this was perhaps St. Ephrem the Syrian in the 4th Century. Like St. Ephrem the Syrian, perhaps the greatest poet-theologian in the Christian tradition, Monk Damascene shows himself capable of theologizing through poetry. The first section of Christ the Eternal Tao is actually a long poem, composed of enneadic sections in the manner of the Tao Te Ching, This is in fact a meditation in verse on the deep realities of the Christian faith and the astonishing manner in which these are anticipated in the work of Lao Tzu. The commentary which follows stands on its own as a theological study of the Orthodox Christian tradition, especially in its dimension of mystical theology. Highest recommendation.

The book is short, and he self-consciously creates enough undeveloped characters to make War and Peace seem underpopulated. And then similar to the Russian epic, some of the characters have multitudes of nicknames which only adds to the confusion. At one point, the author claims that the one character's pet names for the other were indicative of the all the different ways he loved her. However, the nicknames were "radish" and "banana."

The unifying thread of the work is marriage in various forms. But what's strange is that frequently Kafka-Gibbons creates difficult, uneasy partnerships. The poor woman referred to as "radish" and "banana" finds herself loving her fiance "despite herself" -- a fact that feels false after the author depicted her wincing and cringing at his appearance, demeanor, language and practically everything else. In fact, women in general are drawn as cool and controlling beings which Kafka-Gibbons tries to portray through several women characters' mastery of a pair of unruly male hound dogs. The two gay characters are sadly indistinguishable from one another. In fact, his one vivid character, Dee, a 20 year old riding instructor seems to be a patchwork of 21st century frankness and 1920's manners and language.

What is admirable about this novella is Kafka-Gibbons support of gay marriage. His characters debate its merits intelligently, and hopefully this work will enlighten some lawmakers. Still I feel that Kafka-Gibbons weakens his own case by showing unions of seemingly less than happy couples.

The author throws various obstacles, doubts, and trials in front of the various couples, so much so that the whole affair reminds one of something from Austen or Hardy. Indeed, the characters are all rolling in so much money that they don't have to deal with the mundane problems of average (that is to say, middle-class) people. Instead, the book presents a wagonload of modern issues, from mental illness to gay marriage, gay parenting, the modern May/December romance, and so forth. These are all wittily and ably handled, with some quite nice turns of phrase and banter, but one never ever feels the characters are real or even acting in a real world. The final fifth of the book bogs down in a legal case concerning recognition of gay marriage, and while the author has clearly done his research on the matter, his desire to wave the banner in defense of gay marriage kind of overwhelms all else.

I picked up this book 'cause it's set in my hometown in a neighborhood I know well. Kafka-Gibbons does sort of capture part of life around "Dupont", but only the white high life of cafes and bookshops. It's unfathomable to me that he could have omitted any mention of the bike couriers, chess players, homeless, and young gay hustlers who are the primary denizens of the circle. He does namecheck the city's establishments left and right (although I have to laugh at the notion of middle-aged people catching two sets of jazz at the Black Cat!), but there's none of the sense of what I consider to be the "real" DC of writers such as Edward Jones (check out his brilliant book "Lost In the City") or George Pelecanos.

Quibbles aside, it's a mostly fun and fast-paced light read.

What really sets this novel apart are the intertwining love stories-- especially the wacky relationship between stately judge and young law student and the relationship between Jon and Peter-- a gay couple that takes on the challenges of parenting and finds them tougher than anything a reactionary government can throw at them. The novel's author, Paul Kafka, pulls off a tough trick-- he crafts an edgy novel with political sting, but also a novel that doesn't take itself too seriously. Yup, a homophobic government is the villain here, but it's the villain in a touching and light-hearted comedy. As one of Kafka's characters says, "The state has replaced the recalcitrant fathers of Shakespeare's comedies of love." Kafka's written a great little comedy that reminds us of how silly we all are.

This aspects of culture or personality can be "hard to read" or not pleasant or downright insane- he points this out beautifully. There is the great animal sadness to be found in those enigmatic places, especially for the traveler with his bag and notebook - connecting to our times - our own particular darknesses - Mr. Theroux is especially sensitive to this - next to Evelyn Waugh and all those greats, he's one of my favorite writer-writers. He's one of those writers you want to call up and thank.