Review "Poetic and with flashes of brilliance...If Sophia is any indication, we have a promising new writer here, who, like his main character, might be on a pilgrimage of his own."—NPR"Yes, the spirit of Barry Hannah resides in Sophia, but, as Reverend Maloney so eloquently puts it, 'Now is now and then was then.' Bible's talent is such that he knows how to take scripture and bend and twist it into something that can exist in both heaven and hell. This is an ecstatic novel, and Bible is a fantastic writer." —Kevin Wilson, author of The Family Fang"Most contemporary fiction makes me wonder why people try to write anymore. Michael Bible helps me remember why."  —Blake Butler, author of Three Hundred Million "Michael Bible's Sophia is a real howl of a book. It will drill holes inside your head and then fill them with a rushing pop of words. It's a wild journey from the deep south to New York City, with detours for chess tournaments, sexual escapades, and encounters with the holy ghost along the way. There's a lot of pain inside this book, too, but don't worry: you'll enjoy it." —Scott McClanahan, author of Crapalacia“Sophia is a whirlwind…[it] arrives in fast, crisp sentences: first-person narrated, increasingly surreal vignettes that follow the misadventures of Reverend Alvis Maloney. He might have been a Flannery O’Connor character if there had been someone to pray for him every minute of his life. …Bible is a real talent.”—The Millions"Amid the sharp, laconic prose that its structure facilitates, Bible emerges as one of the most interesting and exciting new novelists in years...superbly written...a rich yet entirely unpretentious debut that, just as its conclusion marks a promising new start for its cast, marks a very promising start for its author."—Electric Literature"[Bible's] short, comic novel, which relates a bibulous Southern preacher’s perverse quest for sainthood, is full of small miracles."—Publishers Weekly, starred review"Bible delivers an elliptical, provocative novella about the profane and the spiritual, all of it drenched in sweat, sex, and booze."—Kirkus ReviewsPraise for Cowboy Malone’s Electric City   “It’s Hunter S. Thompson and William Burroughs on a road trip, high on peyote, their hearts broken, Denis Johnson looking to get naked in the sand . . . You slow down for a moment, and enter the nostalgic world that Michael Bible has created and wonder if there is any way to stay there.” —The Nervous Breakdown Read more About the Author MICHAEL BIBLE is originally from North Carolina. He studied under Barry Hannah at the University of Mississippi and worked with David Milch adapting William Faulkner’s Light in August for HBO. His writing has appeared in Oxford American, The Paris Review Daily, Al Jazeera America, ESPN: The Magazine, and New York Tyrant. Read more
R**N
BRILLIANT! BRAVO!
One of the most singular modern novels written.
A**R
It was funny though.
It was weird. I had trouble following anything in the book. It was funny though.
P**P
Unfiltered Southern Goth-Raunch
In the 1960's I was very much influenced by Richard Brautigan, whose left-coast, summer of love pieces and books, ("Trout Fishing in America"), featured humor, imagination and endlessly inventive metaphors. Brautigan's heroes were often naive lost souls who muddled through, or were bemused by, the culture around them. I thought of Brautigan while I was reading this book, and it seems to me that the comparison is passingly fair.Bible's characters are more energetic and more quirky in that loud, crazy, booze soaked, sunstroked, humid style that marks Southern-goth-crazy, and that is just fine by me. Delivery is rapid fire, and thoughts and observations ping-pong from subject to subject like those little balls in lottery number-picking machines. The book is practically a catalogue of every aspect, big and small, important or trivial, of current popular culture.There's a plot, but it's not much, it doesn't really pick up until half-way through, and it doesn't matter anyway. Rev. Maloney and Eli could just never have left their front porch at all, and the book wouldn't suffer one whit. The humor and wordplay alternate among sly, base, clever, raunchy, impolitic, insightful, satirical, and arrestingly perceptive, sometimes within the same paragraph. And once Rev. Maloney builds up a head of steam, which happens every few pages, the reader has to just get out of the way and try to keep up.So, this is wonderful, entertaining and rewarding stuff. A great find. (Please note that I received a free advance ecopy of this book without a review requirement, or any influence regarding review content should I choose to post a review. Apart from that I have no connection at all to either the author or the publisher of this book.)
R**N
... as prose poetry while telling a story of a sad man with no sense of purpose
Bible's minimalist style comes off as prose poetry while telling a story of a sad man with no sense of purpose. While obsessed with saints and martyrdom Maloney only finds purpose from those around him, always talking about getting out of his small town and doing something with life constantly contradicting himself while staying on his boats throwing painkillers to the back of his throat and washing it down with gin. That is until life says otherwise.
S**S
Chess
My guess is that few readers will be ambivalent about Michael Bible’s novel, Sophia. I found the prose strange, the characters unappealing and the plot not very interesting. Eli is a chess wiz, and he and the Reverend journey around the country as Eli wins tournaments and the Reverend keeps the winnings. While there is a struggle with spirituality that might be happening over the course of the novel, I found that I didn’t care. I laughed on occasion, but returned often to reflecting on what an odd novel this is. Some readers are likely to love its quirkiness. Read a sample to see if you might be one of those readers.Rating: Two-star (I didn’t like it)
P**.
Bizarre
A very strange book. Read it while tripping on acid as that seems to be the state the author was in when he wrote it. Don't read it if you are sensitive to criticism of organized religion. Otherwise it is funny.
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