Review of The Shack, by William Paul Young (ISBN:978-0964729230)

SYNOPSIS

Mackenzie Phillips, one-time star of the television show “One Day at a Time,” takes a vacation to a shack, where she somehow loses a daughter she never had. Four years later, during the Great Depression, she again returns to the shack where she supposedly lost her daughter, and finds that it is inhabited by all sorts of strange people that freak her out. She tries to escape, but can’t, as she feels compelled to give free drug counseling to the inhabitants of the shack.

REVIEW

I found this book to be confusing, and not up to the usual standards of the used bookstore where I purchased the book. The cover was torn, and there were what appeared to be tear stains on most of the pages. I am assuming that they are tear stains, and not simply water, because they had a salty taste when I licked them.

The book starts off slowly, with the main character Mackenzie Phillips pretending to be a man, and some nonsense about her losing her daughter. Mackenzie actually never had a daughter; her only child is a son, born in 1987, well after the Great Depression. The sub-title of the book is “Where Tragedy Confronts Eternity,” and this was well demonstrated during the first several chapters.

After losing patience and skipping straight to the final page of the story, I was struck by the number of pages in the book. It is exactly 256 pages long, which is 2^8, 4^4, or 16 squared. This is the only 3 digit number that is zenzizenzizenzic, which means a number that is the square of squares squaredly. This is also meaningful in computer science, where it is the number of integers that it is possible to represent with 8 bits. I don’t know how the author managed to pack so much symbolism into the format of the book, but once I found out about this, I gained a new appreciation for the book, guaranteeing it at least one star.

I decided to give the book a chance, even though it completely misrepresented one of my favorite sit-com actresses of all times. 

Boy, was I wrong. Once Phillips gets to the shack and meets the people who live there, she starts to have flashbacks of some sort. The people in the shack start smiling, laughing and talking obliquely about religion. They then give Phillips some advice taken from the Oprah Winfrey show for about half of the book. This didn’t really end until my hero, the one and only Mackenzie Phillips, finds a Gideon’s bible in the bed stand, and starts to read it to her companions. They are astonished by what they are hearing, and they all want to be baptized and return to rehab to be counseled by Phillips.

What an ending!!!

Okay. I made some of that up. But that is how it should have ended. 

CONCLUSIONS

This book is a must-read for fans of Mackenzie Phillips, and for people who are trying hard to avoid getting real answers for their problems. It just simply doesn’t stack up to the Bible, “One Day at a Time,” or “Dallas.”

I’m giving the book 1 Star out of 5. The 1 star is for the really cool symbolism with the number 256.

Until next time,

Anne Stallings, for Novel Premise Book Reviews