Books: Dishonoring thy father

The artist formerly known as Franky fails again at fiction | John W. Alexander

Frank Schaeffer, rebel son of the prominent Presbyterian minister who founded a ministry in Switzerland called L'Abri (the shelter), has written his second novel about Calvin Becker, rebel son of a prominent Presbyterian minister who founds a ministry in Switzerland called L'Arche (the ark). Autobiographical? No, no, says the disclaimer, this is fiction. Granting that unlikely premise, Saving Grandma still fails miserably.

Coleridge said that "a willing suspension of disbelief" is required for a reader to engage his imagination in a poem or story. In this novel, we are asked to empathize with a 15-year-old protagonist/narrator, who, though functionally illiterate, is so precocious that he can critique fine points of Calvinism and even practice medicine successfully (he saves Grandma's life though his parents fail to save her soul) without training or a license. As the story develops, the reader's disbelief is not merely suspended unwillingly, but positively hanged by the neck until dead.

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