Do you recognize this title?
Dates: 1/17/04,2:27 PM through 1/17/04,9:20 PM (2 postings)
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FROM: "Kristina Parlee" <[removed]@halifaxpubliclibraries.ca>
REC'D: 1/17/04, 2:27 PM
A patron contacted us via email trying to track down a title she had
read a few years ago (she thinks around 1997). Her description is below
- does anyone recognize it?
The book was fiction, probably considered satire if that helps. It was
about God getting fed up with the human race and deciding that he was
going to bring an end to the world. The devil is horrified because he
thinks things are going great so he fights
to save the world while God strives to destroy it. I thoroughly enjoyed
it. Hope you find me a clue.
The closest we've come is Good Omens by Neil Gaiman - but it doesn't
seem quite right. Does anyone have any other suggestions?
Thanks in advance.
Kristina
FROM: David Wright <[removed]@yahoo.com>
REC'D: 1/17/04, 9:20 PM
Booklist Review: It's a Westlake caper novel, so
have patience--it will all become clear in the
end. Usually Westlake's sneaky morality plays
bear some relationship to the crime genre, but
not this time. "Humans" has an apocalyptic
warning written into its complexities: God is fed
up with humanity and has concluded it's time for
the world to end. He dispatches an angel to trick
a few carefully chosen humans into engineering
Armageddon, but the devil has other ideas. He'd
like to save the world. As the gods struggle, a
few straggling humans--including a Russian
fireman dying from nuclear exposure at Chernobyl,
a once-famous singer now a lonely activist, an
AIDS-infected African whore, and a habitual
criminal looking for the big score--just might
have some small say in our destiny. Westlake is,
by turns, funny, caustic, and downbeat. His
characters, uniformly grim creations, nonetheless
have their light moments in this riotous,
cynical, one-of-a-kind fantasy thriller. God is
very bad; angels are not to be trusted; Satan
might be our only hope--we are, to borrow George
Bush's phrase, in deep do-do.
Another possibility might be Harry Mulisch's 'The
Discovery of Heaven.' And your reader might
enjoy James Morrow's stuff as well, as far as
satiric takes on Biblical tradions go.
David Wright
Seattle Public Library
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