December 1, 2020
The acclaimed biographer turns to memoir. Metaxas, whose works include bestselling books about Martin Luther, William Wilberforce, and Dietrich Bonhoeffer, narrates the story of his own life up to 1988, when he was 25. That year, when his true conversion to Christianity occurred, serves as a significant demarcation point in his journey. In a narrative reminiscent of Saint Augustine's Confessions, Metaxas delivers a warts-and-all exploration of his youth--including discussions of elements of his early life on which he looks back with regret--in order to explain how his faith altered his trajectory. Like Augustine, Metaxas recounts his mostly secular intellectual development, which created a foundation for his later spiritual conversion and nourishment. Whereas Augustine stole pears from a tree because his friends were doing it, Metaxas ostracized another boy in his class because of a desire to fit in. "I think I would do almost anything to go back there now to try to undo what I did," he writes, "to befriend him or show him some love or kindness." While Augustine recounted how he lived with a concubine and had a child with her, Metaxas relates the story of a girlfriend's abortion. Throughout, the author records his experiences in excruciating detail, creating a book that will be illuminating to his family, friends, and readers of his previous books but that will struggle to find a general reading audience. The most interesting sections involve the author's Greek heritage, tales of a childhood spent in a Greek Orthodox church, and his on-and-off flirtations with faith. Some will be disappointed that the book ends at the most intriguing point--the author's rather sudden conversion story, which would dramatically change the direction of his life and the purpose behind his work--but perhaps another volume is in the works. An exhaustive cliffhanger for devoted Metaxas fans.
COPYRIGHT(2020) Kirkus Reviews, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
Starred review from February 1, 2021
The riveting story of a twentieth-century martyr, Bonhoeffer (2010), captured the imagination of millions, including President Obama. Here the author of that chronicle recounts how he rediscovered his Christian faith. Metaxas acknowledges religious influences already shaping him during his childhood and adolescence--the Nicene Creed he uncomprehendingly memorized in his immigrant father's Greek, the "Jesus Movement" Catholic priest he joined as a teen for good-vibe prayers, the modern-vernacular New Testament he found in his parents' bedroom and read with nascent belief. But these early spiritual influences proved too weak to sustain Metaxas against the sophisticated skepticism that surrounded him as a student of literature at Yale, where he cut ties with Christian friends, who became an embarrassment among his hip nihilist classmates. Yet Metaxas still hungered for what au courant friends and professors dismissed as illusion: real meaning. Metaxas' candor allows readers to see how that hunger persists after graduation, even as financial distress reduces a once-ambitious writer to proofreading chemical manuals. In a narrative improbable yet compelling, readers see an Episcopalian graphic designer nudging this confused proofreader toward spiritual openness, so priming him for a life-changing dream infused with ancient symbolism, the sign of a spiritual rebirth as a Christian. A profoundly moving memoir.
COPYRIGHT(2021) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.