Book Review: Please open 'The God File'

My first reaction after reading "The God File" by Frank Turner Hollon (MacAdam/Cage, $23.00, 147 pages) was, "This is a great book." Several days later, my opinion has not changed.

"The God File" would be a good read if only for the clear arresting voice of the narrator, Gabriel Black, and compelling because of the page-turning suspense of the man's uncertain fate.

It is far easier to talk about why a novel is good than make the case for greatness -- an elusive quality usually decided between the author and each individual reader -- the difference between craft and art.

I call it great because I felt as though Hollon were sitting beside me and breathing his story into my ear alone. The book is done so well, is so lacking in contrivance as to seem effortless. The author has what I call "leadership" -- the ability to grab you and take you somewhere and you don't want to let go of his hand.

In this case it's especially true because the action takes place in a dismal maximum-security prison.

The premise is deceptively simple: In his mid-20s, for reasons unfathomable even to him, Gabriel Black confessed to a capital murder he did not commit and has remained incarcerated for 22 years. During that time, he became an avid reader, collecting snippets of stories, memories and observations giving evidence that God exists. These constitute the "God file" -- slight passages of one or two pages, each one a chapter in the book, a few dozen in all.

If T. S. Eliot showed us fear in a handful of dust, Hollon shows us faith and a quest for the meaning of life in a motley bundle of scribbles kept in a cardboard box and shoved under a bunk in a prison cell.

Gabriel Black turns the expression "The Devil is in the details" on its head to interpret God in the details. As his fellow inmate John tells it, " ... we simply do not have the time, or take the time, to explore the little details. But when a person is in prison, ... all he has are the little details to explore."

Gabriel explores all the "disgusting sadness" of his life and almost in the same sentence declares that the next moment is a gift. There are passages in this book so luminous and precise -- on simple silence or the smell of a baseball glove -- and so true -- about orgasm resembling poison ivy -- that you simply don't know whether to cry or shout for joy. If you are also a writer, you may want to pack up and go home.

Of course, it had to be about a woman -- the enigmatic and unworthy Janie Fitzpatrick. Janie was -- is -- the love of Gabriel's life. It was for her that he took the rap of life imprisonment with no parole and she has never thanked nor once visited him.

In the brown box are several letters Gabriel has written to Janie. These letters form a brilliant progression of his state of mind as he moves from hopefulness to despair to acceptance. They serve as terse pleadings that become expressive prayers and might have been written to God Himself.

Janie does not respond. She is a vanished presence.

One summer long ago in Paris, Ernest Hemingway sat down to write four true sentences. Frank Hollon has beat that record by the hundreds. He writes about fire and football, families and depravity and killing and the weather, and it seems as though you are reading about these ordinary things for the first time.

It would demean this book to mention a "faith journey" or redemption or blather on about a soul struggling with his dark side. This book is not even about religion. It is philosophy of a lofty order discovered through gritty reality.

Gabriel is the highest ranking archangel of the Hebrew, Christian and Muslim religions. By the end of this unusual and expert novel, his namesake is soaring, lifting us also.

I hope Frank Hollon finds the audience he deserves. Perhaps it will begin in a college classroom. A daring professor might decide to scrap the musty text of Descartes and his endless proofs of the existence of a Supreme Being and assign "The God File" instead.

What an exalted act that would be!