The first book of the year for my church book club is William P. Young’s The Shack. The buzz around this book has been circulating for several months now. Although it’s died down, at the library I was typically getting multiple requests for this book on a daily basis. I also had several people from church ask me if I’d read it, so I knew when the time came to choose our 2009 books, that The Shack would be on the list. It was, and I scheduled it for our first discussion, not wanting to lose any of the word-of-mouth momentum – plus I was looking forward to reading it myself. Our library has several copies, but they are all checked out and have multiple holds waiting, so I went ahead and bought myself a copy, and eagerly awaited the time of the meeting to approach so I could delve into it and see what all the fuss was about. Well. The title of this posts sums it up, but allow me to elaborate.

The Shack is a work of fiction, ostensibly written by ‘Willie’ as told to him by his friend Mackenzie, whose young daughter has been brutally murdered. Mack has received a letter from someone signing it ‘Papa,’ inviting him to come to the shack where his daughter was killed. I won’t give any other plot details away, in case there are people out there who aren’t familiar with this book and would like to read it, but I won’t be recommending it.

I was willing to overlook the sophomoric writing if the message contained within was compelling, but I am disappointed to say that for me, neither the writing nor the message was enough to redeem this book. The characters are flat and in several instances, pointless. The plot is contrived and falls short of its promise. On the whole, I found the theology either too pat or too circuitous. Personally, I didn’t read anything revelatory or even that controversial. There are things I agreed with, but I agreed with those before reading the book. The Shack didn’t change any of my beliefs, or even shake them.

Now with all that said, I haven’t really talked to anyone about the book. Our book club meeting is not until later this week, so perhaps our discussion will enlighten me, perhaps even change my mind about The Shack. Stranger things have happened.