This week’s review is The Shack by William P. Young. One of my favorite ways to rest is by curling up with a good book. Like movies and music, all genres appeal to me, and I give all my books a shot. There are a few ways I find new books to read: Goodreads, my two book clubs, friends’ recommendations, and browsing the internet. My favorite author is Greg Iles, and the books I am most interested in reading are nonfiction books about the Holocaust.
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The Shack
The Shack was recommended by a book club friend. She was the same friend that recommended Carry On, Warrior which I loved. I was not expecting what came about from reading this book, but I am glad it happened.
Fictional story about tragedy confronting eternity. #theshack Share on X
What it’s about
Taken from the Amazon website:
“Mackenzie Allen Philips’ youngest daughter, Missy, has been abducted during a family vacation and evidence that she may have been brutally murdered is found in an abandoned shack deep in the Oregon wilderness. Four years later in the midst of his Great Sadness, Mack receives a suspicious note, apparently from God, inviting him back to that shack for a weekend. Against his better judgment he arrives at the shack on a wintry afternoon and walks back into his darkest nightmare. What he finds there will change Mack’s world forever.
In a world where religion seems to grow increasingly irrelevant The Shack wrestles with the timeless question, “Where is God in a world so filled with unspeakable pain?” The answers Mack gets will astound you and perhaps transform you as much as it did him. You’ll want everyone you know to read this book!”
About the author
Taken from the author’s Goodreads page:
“Wm. Paul Young is a Canadian author. Young was the oldest of four. He spend the majority of his first decade with his missionary parents in the highlands of Netherlands New Guinea (West Papua), among the Dani, a tribal people. When he was six he was sent to a boarding school.
The manuscript, that later became The Shack, was intended only for his six kids and for a handful of close friends. After multiple rejections by publishers, Young and his friends published the book under the name of their newly created publishing company. The Shack was one of the top-selling fiction books of 2008 and will be a major motion picture in Spring 2017.
Young lives in Happy Valley, Oregon with his wife and has six children and several grandchildren. He is also the author of Crossroads, Eve and the non-fiction book, Lies We Believe About God.”
My thoughts on it
The Shack makes you look at relationships in a different way. It shows how to love one another despite differences between persons. Learning how to accept the other person for who they are and working on enriching that relationship. No matter how hard it will get to take the other person’s’ concerns and worries and dreams for value as they value them, it will get easier with time.
For those struggling with faith, this novel will either make it easier to comprehend faith or leave you with more questions. Either of those options is okay because it means you are listening to something greater than us. You are struggling to see the bigger picture even though we will never see it as God sees it.
I’ve never had a devastating situation as the main character, Mack, sufferers, but I hope to keep in mind all the things that Papa, Sarayu, and Jesus teaches him about that suffering. The suffering will come in various forms of despair, this I know, and knowing that God did not cause is often times difficult to accept. But what is easier to accept is that God will take that difficulty and turn it into a good purpose. Again, we may not see the good right away or ever, but it is part of His bigger picture. He will work some good out of each of our despair and suffering.
Buy The Shack by William P. Young on Amazon.
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