The Churchgoer audiobook

It is the mark of good writing when you continue reading, even though you cannot sympathize with the characters. While I was not very sympathetic to the main character, the writing is robust and vibrant. As the book progresses, the story takes on a life of its own and propels the characters forward to the climax. I appreciate that the author did not go for the stereo typical happy ending, but chose an ending consistent with the characters themselves. It is an honest and refreshing work, and it invoked emotions that were at times unexpected.

If you can imagine Henry Chinaski after he quit drinking, found and abandoned religion (not in that order) placed in a well-developed surfer pulp novel...this is that!

Usually I can tell whether I like a book or not by the length of time it takes me to read it. If I like it, it’ll go fast. If I love it, it’ll go even faster; an intense feeding that happens at all hours of the day and night. But with THE CHURCHGOER, the spectacular debut novel by Patrick Coleman, I purposefully slowed down, savoring not just the elegantly paced plot, but every morsel of Coleman’s sentence structure and word choice. Coleman is an interesting writer. His work has appeared in literary journals and a book of poetry even won a prize in 2015. As a lover of crime noir, I love that his debut novel is set as a surf noir. Believe it or not, surf noir is a scintillating sub genre of mystery fiction. Amidst the stacks of crime sub genres, besotted with everything from cat detectives to run of the mill hard boiled dicks, rides a glorious wave of surf noir. Have you read (or even heard of) TAPPING THE SOURCE or THE DOGS OF WINTER by Kem Nunn? How about CUTTER AND BONE, TO DIE IN LA or DREAMLAND by Newton Thornburg? More recently how about Don Winslow’s THE DAWN PATROL, THE GENTLEMAN’S HOUR, SAVAGES, and THE WINTER OF FRANKIE MACHINE? Or, if you’re into nonfiction, the Pulitzer Prize winning BARBARIAN DAYS by William Finnegan?You can’t miss with any of these books, and that includes Coleman’s debut about Mark Haines, a former evangelical youth pastor who abandons his wife, his daughter, and his beliefs. If you’re looking for a great novel - not just a mystery, but a spectacular, well-written novel - look no further than this book. Oh yeah, those other books are really great, too.

It’s clear that Patrick Coleman has an axe to grind against evangelical culture. He uses The Churchgoer as an outlet to do so.I’m a Christian and while I’ve always been a mainline Protestant one (translation: a tad more open-minded than many), I’m quite familiar with the evangelical culture Coleman is skewering here. Many of his references and stories brought back flashbacks to my own life. Attendance numbers have steadily declined in these churches for the last decade (reflective of a decline in church attendance amongst all denominations) but in the 90s and aughts, they were cultural powerhouses. The music, the preachers, the musicians. It was everywhere.The faith aspect of it is one thing. I’m never going to disrespect anyone’s faith, or lack thereof. But the structure of many of the churches leaves something to be desired. Coleman goes after both. In the latter, he does a much better job. He knows the lingo, the methods, the people. He knows how it works. The former…well it didn’t bother me. I read plenty of atheist or non-theist writers. But the main character’s lack of faith sometimes leads into long internal monologues about life and love. Some work, others don’t.Those monologues comprise about 60% of the book itself. The rest is the mystery, which is standard issue crime fare and good enough for a first time novel writer. You basically have to decide if you’re willing to set the mystery aside for large parts of the novel in favor of a misanthrope’s musings. It worked for me. It may not work for you.

I'm going to have much more to say about THE CHURCHGOER at a later time — it's the kind of novel that requires a few re-readings and a lot of thoughtful digestion — but for now, suffice it to say that this underheralded novel is absolutely worth the time of anyone interested in a man's honest reckoning with his male gaze (oh, and also, God and religion and society and stuff; but, really, Mark Haines' main issues are with the women in his life, and the specific woman he thinks he wants to rescue, but also maybe have sex with, as his redemption vehicle). It's a novel with crime in it — there's a murder and a missing woman and a soiled Everyman's need to fix everything as a way of fixing himself — but calling THE CHURCHGOER a work of crime fiction feels cruelly reductive. It's a novel as shaggy as the circular peregrinations of fallen pastor Mark Haines, its central character, in shaggy search of shaggy new truths that allow him to lift himself up from his marginal existence, or maybe to find continued cold comfort in his apocalyptic alienation. It's also a novel of place — truly a great Southern California novel, as incisive about beach lifer as it is the newer and more soulless communities inland — and above all a novel of ideas as funnelled through character which is plumbed to every possible layer of petrified depth. And yet, for all that depth, it's never anything less than compulsively readable. (At one point, I made a note: "Kem Nunn goes to church," and somehow that still feels right as a brutal sort of shorthand summary.)It's also got one of the better voices I've ever read; if the measure of a great book is in its quotability, its ability to distill essential insights, interpretations and truths in near-tweetable form, THE CHURCHGOER is an all-time classic. I could easily blow up this review with at least a hundred excerpts that struck with the originality of their pathos or their pithiness (the two qualities this novel has in abundance). I'll share just a few from the first few chapters as an appetite-whetter: — "I hadn’t made a habit of helping people for a long time, and there was plenty down in there to be suspicious of, along with the one or two better impulses that had adapted to the lack of light and air, like a couple ghost crabs warming their claws on a deep-sea thermal vent." — "“No matter how you rhyme it, Dr. Seuss was just another rich f**k from La Jolla who stepped out on his wife and didn’t look back after she swallowed a bottleful of barbiturates. His books are garbage, too. Rhyming a generation’s brains into insipidity.”— "Maybe I wasn’t touching some Eternal All anymore, or seeing the world in a grain of sand and a bead of salt water, but in the moment this felt better. I was feeling my limitations, and his limitations, and rubbing up against humankind’s ability to make life an ineluctably large pain in the a** for others—the sad, gorillan mass of this humanity hurtling toward an unsatisfying and unceremonious end." — "What I did wasn’t fixing. It was discovering the injured person and then administering a kind of spiritual waterboarding.— "I’d been called ambivalent often enough, by everyone from my ex-wife to the guy taking my order in the Robertito’s drive-thru. There was always an intended dig in it, an insult, but I failed to see what was wrong with it—took a certain pride in it, in fact. People with certainties were the problem." — "Maybe she was closer to me, not angry at God for anything He’d done or ordained but angry at Him for being a ghost, a figment, an illusion—angry at the minds of some indefinite number of prior selves who had been fooled by the movement always on the edge of vision, the feeling of being watched that never went away, that sense of a presence who granted the deepest wish: never to be alone.— "He looked, the way all newborns do, like a disgruntled member of the California Raisins."For now, I can say that if this kind of writing and thinking appeals to you, read THE CHURCHGOER. There's a lot more where that came from, and a lot more to say about them.

Nic Pizzolatto je sa McConaugheyem pripremao novu saradnju za FX, seriju REDEEMER po romanu THE CHURCHGOER Patricka Colemana. Coleman je pre ovog romana napisao zbirku poezije i nije tipičan pisac krimića, pa tako ni THE CHURCHGOER nije tipičan krimić.Reč je o kalifornijskom noiru, smeštenom u Oceanside i okolinu San Diega (dobra vest za one kojima već nedostaje ANIMAL KINGDOM) ali bitno drugačiji i od Winslowa koji je okrenut klasičnijem žanrovskom izrazu a svakako od Pynchona kog zanima nešto skroz drugačije unutar konvencije krimića.Colemanov roman na nivou priče ide linijom klasičnog noira, sa junakom kog život nije mazio - ovog puta reč je o traumatizovanom bivšem evangelističkom pastoru koji je napustio svog megachurch, razočarao se u veru, pošao putem alkoholizma, rasturio porodicu i sad je usamljeni i rezignirani noćni čuvar. Njegov život dobija novi impuls kada upoznaje intrigantnu devojku, lutalicu koja se sporadično pojavljuje u njegovom životu a onda nestaje istog dana kada na njegovom poslu dolazi do provale i pogibije njegovog kolege.Otpušten s posla, dodatno traumatizovanim ovim događajima kreće da je traži, i usput shvata da će ponovo morati da uže u svet evangelizma koji (kao što smo isto recimo videli u ANIMAL KINGDOMu) veoma ozbiljan spiritualni fenomen ali i biznis u ovom delu Kalifornije.Colemanu je na prvom mestu studija karaktera, junakove opservacije o veri, sudbini, životu, prirodi i društu pa tek onda noir zaplet. Međutim, žanrovsku okosnicu koristi dosta vešto kao okosnicu za igradnju svog romana, i nesvesno pravi rukopis koji je na kraju jači kao krimić nego kao psihološka studija što mu je bila inicijalna namera.Misterija koja se razotkriva u ovom svetu u kom su fatalne žene koje bude opsesiju, moćni muškarci koji drže ključeve tajni i očajnici uhvaćeni između njih ista je kao i oni, drugačija nego što izgleda ali ne previše.U tom smislu, najveće odstupanje od konvencije žanra jeste da na kraju priče nemamo konvencionalnog krivca, ne samo u pogledu kazne nego i zločina. Svi su ponešto krivi, svako na neki zanimljiv način. Uprkos tome što je roman jači u nekim aspektima koje Coleman nije birao kao osnovni adut, reč je o zanimljivom ostvarenju koje zaslužuje pažnju ljubitelja i poznavalaca.

I don't know how I never had this book on my radar, but it was the announcement that FX had bought the rights and attached True Detective creator Nik Pizzolatto to run the show. While it is getting a new name "Redeemer" it will star Matthew McConaughy as a far more handsome version of the lead Mark Haines than I had in my head. Not to shabby for a debut novel. I was already interested in those powerful storytellers involved but then I saw that the author was from here in San Diego, but there is more. It takes place here in San Diego, and to put a cherry on my interest The author got his MFA in my freaking hometown at Indiana University. Maybe he and I should catch an IU basketball game together? ha-ha.Ok, I love noir and I have been in old pulp sci-fi land because of the podcast for months so it seemed to be a good time to get into a so-cal murder mystery. The story of Mark Haines a security guard from the North County San Diego city of Oceanside. It is an interesting place that is better explained in the book than I could possibly do justice here. Mark has a couple mysteries in his life, one is the hitchhiker he took in she seems to be connected to his former church and the other is his co-worker who is murder right next to him.Oh yeah, that is important Mark is an ex-pastor, ex-dad turned surf bum. He is not an ex-cop or down on his luck detective but he tries hard to be one when these mysteries come into his life. Much of the novel is focused on this reluctant detective that is forced to look at the spiritual path he walked away from. While there were times that it reminded me of two other San Diego surfer mysteries the FX show Terriers and Don Winslow's early novel Dawn Patrol. Since I loved both of those that is not shade but a compliment.As a San Diegan I liked seeing the city reflected in this character's eyes. That is indeed the real spine of this novel is Mark. ultimately I feel this novel is a character piece. He wasn't happy to walk away from his church, family, and reputation. The mystery is interesting but honestly, I was more interested in how everything affected Mark. The answers were secondary to me, I wanted to know Mark better as I turned pages.The writing is strong and the characters rich, the locations were detailed and well-drawn through the character lens. If there is a negative to be was the ending well a little drawn out. There was a long time when the character was stuck underground in a bunker, and I thought that went on a little long. I think some will complain about a slow pace but I was drawn in right away. I thought the setting and the characters provided plenty of hooks.For a book that has a fair bit of religious cynicism, I think the anti-religious aspects were not as thick as I expected. Some reviewers consider this book to be anti-religion I think that it is not preachy myself. Most important it is a California noir with strong characters and Patrick Coleman is a writer to watch!

Patrick Coleman's, 'The Churchgoer' is an extremely well written 'Noir' that explores the protagonist's internal tug of war between a previous loose-fitting religious conviction and the path that leads to his ultimate hostility towards it. In spite of its dark and conventional trappings, at the center of the story is his obsession over a search for a young female stranger whose disappearance he suspects is tied to the death of a co-worker, as well as the exploitation of the same young woman by a former protege' in the church and a mega-church pastor who epitomizes what he despises most about what he has left behind. Despite its departure from what I believe to be spiritual truths, and how the author dabbles in blasphemous references at times, it is a well crafted novel written in exquisite prose. It was entertaining and thought provoking, and kept me turning the pages..

A good readI wasn’t sure I was going to like this book, but ended up loving it. Noir fiction about a loner down on his luck solving a crime. What is not to like? Very well written...

I thoroughly enjoyed this book! The main character drew me in... I loved the dark and the light... the author kept me guessing until the very end! Interesting characters and a unique story idea! Bravo to Patrick Coleman! I can't wait to see your next book!!!

Just finished this unique, metaphysical noir. I really do not understand low-ball reviews that knock this one for “ religious ramblings”. They did not intrude upon the narrative but fit the character , the narrator, as this was as much a mystery of finding one’s true grounding amidst religious dogma. I suspect that excessively negative reviews were given by evangelicals who can’t handle criticism of mega churches.

I liked this book more than I wanted to. It got preachy, but I can understand the anger at the megalomaniac holier than thou church. After being a young follower of such church building fanaticism, it was actually good to know that others had seen the ugly side of intolerance and abuse. The end wrapped up quickly, but there was really nowhere else to go. At least he became less angry.

Set in Oceanside!

My review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kEein...