I
review scores of Christian novels each year. I am very stingy with
five star reviews, giving only a couple out annually to novels. What does it
take to earn five stars? Sarah Arthur has served as a preliminary
fiction judge for Christianity
Today
magazine's annual book awards. Here are her criteria for a novel to
be sent on to the final judges, as listed in A
Light So Lovely.
- Excellent writing
- Complex characters
- Compelling plotlines and reveals
- Questions of ultimate meaning (or was this just a cute, entertaining love story?)
- Theological depth (or did the author fail to reckon with the problem of evil? of suffering?)
- A strong sense of faith communities as a vital presence in the world (or were churches only depicted as irrelevant, at best; or, at worst, dangerous?)
- And finally, a global/cultural awareness (or did the author assume that his or her nationality, race, and class were normative for how the rest of the world should function?)
Her
task as a fiction judge, she writes, “is to discern which books
have the best chance of being on the shelves … in a hundred years.”
Well
said, Sarah. Those requirements paint a pretty clear picture of what
kind of Christian fiction will receive a five star review from me.
Sarah
Arthur, A
Light So Lovely
(Grand Rapids: Zondervan, 2018), 120 and 141.
I
received a complimentary copy of A
Light So Lovely
through Handlebar for the purpose of review. You can read my review
of the book here.
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