Inspect The Worlds Smallest Bible Rendered By Dennis Must Released As Ebook

Worlds Smallest Bible chronicles the seriocomic boyhood of Ethan and Jeremiah Mueller in mill town Pennsylvania during the height of World War II As they lose friends and neighbors to the front lines the boys try to make sense of the mounting darkness with their imaginationsexcept in their world no one ever dies In a private laconic language they invent stories that mirror the irrational world around them a chaplain with bad news becomes the Angel of Death skeletal Nazis lurk around the corner and the ghost of a dead playmate taps at their bedroom window in the night With startling lyricism and narrative grace Dennis Must has fashioned an indelible vision of the Mueller boys blighted youth This is betweenandstar read I liked parts of the book a lots such as the part about the illiterate Polish neighbor who was a master at making things out of junk metals Other parts such as the younger brother's experience at the carnival and especially the Aunt's strip dancing were repulsive and seemed gratuitousThis is the story of two brothers told through the eyes of the older one They sound sort of lower middle class The boys see their Dad as a womanizer and their mother as two women in one a hooker and a prude with suicidal tendencies They are very close as youngsters then drift apart and later reconnect to a degree As youngsters tales of Nazi horrors and lost neighbors are an influence on them both The older boy Ethan becomes fascinated by his Polish immigrant neighbor The younger boy Jeremiah pulls away from his brother and runs with rougher crowd until he becomes a Marine reservist Distressed by the girl who has broken up with him Jeremiah burns up the family car and does damage to himself Contrary to what we've been led to believe about the father his actions in connection to this seem to show that he loves his son deeplyThe last short part of the book is called Coda to the World's Smallest BibleI did not uite understand the point the author was making I was ready to give the book astar particularly for creativity until I read this part and just did not get it Perhaps when this is discussed as the July pick of thest Century Literature Group I will appreciate it better and revise my rating Not sure why but I expected this book to be better than what it was I finished the book in one night but I must say that its graphic than I wanted it to be and than what I expected I love the fact that it has some illustrations I think it makes it stand out and they truly are great If you don't mind having graphic images in your head than this is a great book Don't even start reading TWSB if you are seeking a story neatly wrapped guiding you to a happy feel good ending But if you are willing to enter Dennis Must's writing without a preconceived notion of where you expect to go you will enter the magic of his spare and poetic craft Whether you are with Ethan and Jeremiah Mueller in their haunted bedroom or standing with the brothers as they watch their father dress up and pamper himself in preparation for one of his

Saturday night escapes you are right there in the middle of the scene And yet the reader feels detachment space enough from these human characters as if you are looking through a veil of reality We see them all the restless father suicidal mother the hopeful and searching brothers the slowly going crazy neighbor obsessively building his perpetual motion machine Must makes the reader feel who these people are They are searchers And the redemption and whatever heaven they are searching for may not be available within the severe limits of their life in Hebron As a reader I took something away for myself And that is that searching is indeed part of life And what we seek may not be within our vision Never really got in a groove with this book There were some interesting characters and the writing was solid but I felt lost through much of it thinking Uh so Yes it's deep uestions like these that keep you reading my reviews but I can say the summary on the back of the book makes me even unsure of what I read I enjoyed the illustrations although they seemed to interrupt instead of compliment the text and I was fascinated by the neighbor Stanley who built these wonderful metal contraptions This might have beena month ago but this is the new grumpier me doing the ratings Maybe less There have been a lot of good coming of age books This is not one of them I gave it aas parts are poetic but in general it is unnecessarily obscene pornographic obscure and the author delights in mu vocabulary is better than yours The premise is promising two brothers in a small Pennsylvania town dealing with the horrors of WWII through their fertile imaginations Or rather that's what the back cover summary makes it out to be and initially it starts off strong We meet Ethan and Jeremiah when they're both young reeling from the death of their playmate whose ghost they believe haunts them at night watching as the town's teenaged boys enlist in the war and return home in coffins and dealing with the strained relationship between their philandering father and personality disordered motherIt's when the novel shifts tone to now teenaged Ethan and Jeremiah that it loses steam The entire second act focuses on Ethan's relationship with his alcoholic potentially mentally ill neighbor and his futile attempt of building a perpetual motion machine Jeremiah appears very little in this sectionThe final act falls flat dealing withsomething Ethan and Jeremiah's strained relationship By this point Must's writing becomes increasingly lyrical and surreal Had the story focused solely on the first act the lyricism and surrealism could've have been compelling and heartbreaking Instead by its conclusion it seemed overwrought and I just didn't care anyAlso the illustrations are fantastic but seem completely and totally out of place This might've been better as a graphic novel Overall I didn't really care for this book It didn't grab me so I uit Maybe another time I loved the illustrations I think books should have illustrations like the good old days “Award Winning Finalist in the “Fiction Literary” category of theUSA Best Book Awards” This was the first book I won and read from Goodread's and it was interesting but at times had me scratching my head wondering what was real and what the boys were imagining It was a kind of depressing end as well I couldn't put it down because I was always wanting to know what was going to happen next though so I would recommend others read it Dennis Must describes pre and post WWII Pennsylvania with such accuracy that I was certain he had lived there then His images of high school basketball courts emptied of the boys who once played there because they are fighting and dying far far away reminded me of late August in my home state The presentation of cherished items to boys still living by the mothers of boys who would never those items again is heart wrenching The evolution of the family that moves in next door is can't look away fascinating Must takes us along with two brothers as they move to maturity learning and learning the accept the truths about people and finally of themselves Dennis Must is the author of three novels BROTHER CARNIVAL Red Hen Press Pasadena CATHE WORLDS SMALLEST BIBLE Red Hen Pressand HUSH NOW DONT EXPLAIN Coffeetown Press Seattle WAplus three short story collections GOING DARK Coffeetown Press AugustOH DONT ASK WHY Red Hen Pressand BANJO GREASE Creative Arts Book Company Berkeley CA.