I found Amy Inspired by Bethany Pierce while looking for bargains at Border’s going-out-of-business sale: the cover looked familiar and I remembered seeing it mentioned by a blogger or two.

Amy is an aspiring writer supporting herself by teaching in a college. But she seems to be piling up one rejection after another, both for her written work and in her love life, as her current boyfriend breaks up with her on his lunch break before class. She catalogs her rejections and is obsessed with lists. She lives with an eccentric housemate who brings home a friend, Eli, who needs a place to stay for a while. Amy finds herself strangely drawn to Eli though he is quite different from her and from her expectations of the kind of man she would be interested in. Meanwhile, Amy struggles with what the Christian life is truly supposed to look like, with her writing, which doesn’t seem to be going anywhere, with single life, with her family, with a lovestruck student, and even with her roommate and Eli.

I spent the first — oh, third or so of this book not really liking it very much. The plot seemed to amble along, not really going anywhere, though it was unfolding more about Amy’s character. But I had more serious problems with a couple of aspects of the book.

First, Amy comes from a Fundamentalist background, and there are several digs in the book at fundamentalists. As a fundamentalist myself, I do get tired of the stereotype and the fact that Christendom feels that fundamentalists are fair targets for such digs. On the other hand, I do have to admit there are segments of fundamentalists who give fundamentalism a bad name and who focus on stricter external standards than the Bible calls for, so I can understand someone coming from that background wrestling with exactly what Christianity is and how it’s to be fleshed out.

Secondly, the book is a little…edgier than much Christian fiction. There is a scene, for instance, when Amy and her house mate, Zoe, carry a conversation into the bedroom and continue while Zoe changes clothes. No problem there, but when the author goes on to give a description of Zoe’s body in her underwear — I just don’t need that mental picture. And in another brief scene, Amy is down to her bra and underwear herself when she tells her boyfriend that they have to stop and she can’t have sex with him. It’s good to stop yourself even at that point, but it’s better to not let yourself even get to that point, and Amy knows that and regrets it, but, still, the scene as described leaves a mental picture I don’t want to carry with me.

Besides those issues, though, I did like where Amy ended up in realizing where some of her compulsions were coming from and in finding rest in forgiveness. There is humor laced throughout the book and real pathos as many characters experience varying degrees of loss and growth.

And I liked some of Pierce’s phrasing here and there. For instance, “Grandma FedExed a Ziploc bag of crumbs that had once been homemade oatmeal cookies” (p. 145) made me giggle. A description of a painting (p. 168) almost made me visualize it and her insights helped me understand it. And this paragraph I thought was particularly beautiful (p. 252):

I couldn’t save Ashley. But I hoped I was the first of many people who would lead her step-by-step until her fledgling wonder turned to faith and took flight, one of many believers burning in rows like lights illuminating the length of an airplane runway.

There’s no doubt Bethany Pierce is a skilled writer. I think if some of the scenes had been written less explicitly I’d have fewer mixed emotions about the book.

(This review will also be linked to Semicolon‘s Saturday Review of Books.)