The Shack

From the book:

MACKENZIE Allen Philips’s youngest daughter, Missy, has been abducted during a family vacation and evidence that she may have been brutally murdered is found in an abandoned shack deep in the Oregon wilderness. Four years later, in the midst of his Great Sadness, Mack receives a suspicious note, apparently from God, inviting him back to that shack for the weekend.

Against his better judgement he arrives at the shack on a wintry afternoon and walks back into his darkest nightmare. What he finds there will change Mack’s life forever.

In a world where religion seems to grow increasingly irrelevant THE SHACK wrestles with the timeless question, “Where is God in a world so filled with unspeakable pain?” The answers Mack gets will astound you and perhaps transform you as much as it did him. You’ll want everyone you know to read this book!

My two cents worth:

WHERE can I start without sounding ignorant...??? In all honesty, The Shack was an impulse buy. I honestly thought that it would be something similar to Alice Sebold’s The Lovely Bones. A couple of chapters later, I realised this was not just a book about coming to terms with the grief of a horrible tragedy, it actually goes deeper into Christianity and its beliefs.

Sadly, there is no other way to say this except admit my ignorance (yes, I’m not as smart as I thought I was). In my pursuit to understand and grasp my own religion, I have failed to truly understand the belief of others.

What I liked about the book was that it was an eye opener in understanding Christian beliefs such as the Trinity and what is written in the Scriptures. I literally had to do some research so that I understood the book better. Reviewing as a person who knows little of Christianity, this book has been an educational experience. It didn’t have the profound effect on me that some had from reading the book (from reviews that I read on Amazon and Reading Social) but that’s probably because I am from a different faith altogether.

What I didn’t like about the book was that there was too much dialogue. However, the dialogue was necessary to get the message across through the conversations between Mack, Papa, Jesus and Sarayu. The last three characters representing The Father, The Son and The Holy Spirit. Overall, the pacing for the book was slow but generally an ok read.

Theologians would probably fair better in understanding the content and the sentiments provided by the author as well as the knowledge to become better critics on the book. For me the book was just an educational process, not one that would end up on ‘my favourites’ book shelf.