Stories of Your Life and Others

Wow! My mind was blown and my thoughts engaged numerous times. I almost regret having read through it straight way: perhaps it would have been better had I stopped and started, giving myself time to digest what I had read. But no; I could not stop, I had to keep going. The stories are as compelling as they are thought-provoking.

The title story “The story of your life,” which was made into the movie “Arrival,” is relentless with its question, “What would you do differently, or would you do anything differently, if you knew the future and the results of your decisions?” “The Tower of Babel” twisted my world a little, while “Division by Zero” made me feel exactly the feeling I usually try to avoid when questioning and doubting the biggest and most important faith of my life. “Hell is the Absence of God” makes me glad, so very very glad, that my theology is not that of a child, thinking that the world really should work the way the one in this story does. What hell that would be! And at the end of it all, “Liking What You See: A Documentary” instigated a little bit of a smack-down fight in my inner conversation.

It made me think, sometimes uncomfortably, and the structures and the writing are at times quite beautiful. So all in all, I rate this a highly successful book.