T.L. Hines' "The Falling Away"

T.L. Hines is known for writing what’s called “noir bizarre” stories. Faces in the Fire is about tattoos and a supernatural hit man; The Unseen tells the story of a young man who lives in tunnels and the spaces above office cubicles. Two others I haven’t read are about a woman battling living shadows trying to take over her town, and a woman who has died and come back to life three times.

Yes, indeed: noir and bizarre. Some of the most deeply arresting and thought-provoking novels I have read, you would not expect them to be published by Thomas Nelson, a leading Christian publishing firm. But they are. And they are a marvel to read.

In The Falling Away, published in 2010, the hero Dylan Runs Ahead is a Crow Indian who’s returned from military service in Iraq with serious physical injuries. He’s hooked on painkillers. The voice of his long missing sister Joni speaks to him inside his head. He’s got issues, major issues.

What he doesn’t know is that he’s a chosen, one of those chosen and created by God who is marked for special things. Unfortunately, he’s caught up in a drug deal gone bad, he’s on the run from both thugs and authorities, and he runs right into the hands of a commune called the Hive that is an anti-industrial community that grows its own food organically and (that already trite word) sustainably. The leader of the Hive, a man named Li, knows what Dylan is and wants what Dylan has.

Another group, although “group” is too strong a word, called the Falling Away has sent a young woman named Quinn to find and rescue Dylan before he’s destroyed. Quinn is an “embedder” – she inserts sharp objects and pieces of metal like paper clips beneath her skin to relieve her internal pain and pressure.

These characters, these heroes of the story, are broken people, struggling with their own problems and neuroses. Yet they are the people called upon to do some very unusual things. Christians will recognize this, of course, even when the brokenness is presented in some of its more extreme forms like drug addiction and embedding.

But that is T.L. Hines and what he does in his stories – as Flannery O’Conner once said, you have to draw large pictures for the nearly blind and shout for the nearly deaf. Hines works at the edges, and even though his “noir bizarre” stories seem extreme, their very extremity shocks the reader into recognizing what it is to live and believe in a broken world.

It’s a rather remarkable thing that almost the first half of the novel takes place in the cab of a pickup truck. The narrative and action is so tightly woven that the reader doesn’t even realize it until the plot moves into another phase. The writing is that good.

Another unusual twist is the Hive. In today’s books and films, the villain is usually a nameless and, if I can be redundant, evil corporation. It’s rather refreshing to find the villains ensconced inside of an organic food commune that is actually an infestation of the demonic. But that’s also what Hines does in his stories – challenging the reader to examine personal and cultural icons.

Having now read three of his five novels, I can say that Hines doesn’t tell conventional stories. But he tells stories that need to be told, and he tells them in ways that provoke and offend because they need to provoke and offend. To read a novel by T.L. Hines is to be shaken out of emotional and spiritual complacency. Reading his stories, these stories at the edge, forces us to confront the convention and conventional in our own lives.

He also tells wickedly good stories.

Related:

T.L. Hiness web site.

My review of The Unseen.

My review of Faces in the Fire.

T.L. Hines "The Unseen"

I never thought about being spied upon from the ceiling of my office, or when I’m in an elevator. After reading The Unseen by T.L. Hines, maybe I should.

My introduction to T.L. Hines’ novels was Faces in the Fire, a series of interconnected stories and characters that was, well, stunning in how he pulled it off. He’s often designated (even by his publisher) with a “Christian noir” of “noir bizarre” label. And there’s no question that his novels are not what you usually find in the “Christian fiction” section of the bookstore.

But they are humdinger stories, and force you to confront characters, narratives and issues in ways that few “Christian novels” do.

In The Unseen, Lucas is a young man in his 20s who has a habit, one learned from the time he was in an orphanage. He has become extraordinarily adept at maneuvering himself into tight spaces and then observing people, unseen. And while he observes, he creates stories about them, whole biographies of who they are and where they came from and their families.

He’s content to work as a dishwasher, paid under the table so there are no records. He lives about as transient lifestyle as one can without actually being homeless or a transient. He has no permanent address, but instead moves from forgotten spaces in the Washington D.C. Metro line and underground sewer system to abandoned buildings.

And that is his life, until he comes into contact with the Creep Club, a group whose members do what Lucas does but go far beyond, videotaping and packaging what they film unseen for their own amusement. Then a government agent enters the picture, and Lucas finds himself running for his life.

The Unseen is a strange story, but it’s a strange story that’s absolutely riveting. And while it is published by a Christian publisher, the “message” is not overtly Christian; in fact, it’s barely present. But it’s there, in the story, the theme, the characters and the action. The Unseen is written from a Christian perspective and worldview, but the perspective is not obvious.

And that may be T.L. Hines’ purpose. Tell a good story, and tell it well, and tell it in such a way that the reader says “what?” and wants to know more.

Those Pesky Book Reviews

On Monday, author T.L. Hines posted an article on his blog about book reviews -- and about why you shouldn't do them if you intend to be a published writer yourself. His reason, and it's a valid one, is what can happen when you review a book you hate -- and you later run into the author who wrote it, like at a writer's conference. Without a doubt, your name has been burned into the writer's mind. It can make for general unpleasantness all around.

I wrote a review of his latest novel, Faces in the Fire, and posted the review on Amazon and some thoughts about the book on this blog. That review doesn't apply to Hines' argument, because I really liked the book and my review and my blog post reflected that.

I've learned to avoid the problem Hines discusses by writing reviews only of books I like, and like a lot, books so well written that they make me think of something in a new way, blow my socks off with an incredibly crafted story, or send me to Amazon to find everything else this author has written.

But there's a key word in the first sentence of that paragraph -- learned. I once wrote a review that cited a book's fine writing but pointed out some problems. Some saw the same things but weren't as bothered by them; others felt more strongly than I did. But for whatever reason, it was my review that caught people's attention. It caused some nasty reactions, it did, from the writer's fans. It got so nasty that I ultimately removed the review (in that sense, online is much easier to manage than print). Some Christians can sometimes be very un-Christian like in their behavior. All of us have our moments. But it wasn't worth the general nastiness. (And Hines is right -- those names and comments are burned into my consciousness, and this was just a book review.)

But I still write and post reviews. I read a lot of both fiction and non-fiction. I review perhaps a fifth of what I read (ask my wife how the books pile up around here). I read a variety of genres. But I review very little of what I read. Some books begin with an interesting premise and then fade into triteness. Others promise something different but then discourage you with the utterly expected. Others have characters that never move beyond cardboard. Still others go well for the first three fourths of the way and then collapse into compressed and hackneyed plot resolution.

And then there are the ones that make reading pleasurable and completely worthwhile, including the ones you wished you hadn't read. These are the authors whose writing is consistently good because they work at it hard and work at telling the best story they possibly can. They may not be the "brands" that dominate the best-seller lists but they love what they do and they compel the reader to love what they do. And it's not just the "literary" crowd but writers working across all the genres. Some are well known but many are not, and I'll write reviews of their works and post them and blog about them and tweet them and retweet them, because they deserve a wider audience and readers deserve to find them.

Here are some of them: T.L. Hines, Dale Cramer, Athol Dickson, Travis Thrasher, Chris Fabry, Charles Martin, Bonnie Grove, Susan Meissner, Anne Lamott, Michael Snyder, Charles Martin, Marilynne Robinson, Brandilyn Collins, Mike Dellosso, L.L. Barkat. Check them out.

"Faces in the Fire" by T.L. Hines

If you read the back cover of T.L. Hines' Faces in the Fire, you’ll see that Library Journal calls the novel a supernatural thriller, and Publisher’s Weekly says it’s “breathless suspense that’s a little off-center.” Even the publisher’s description suggests edginess: “noir bizarre.”

And this is Christian fiction published by a Christian publishing house. Noir bizarre?

That’s exactly what “Faces in the Fire” is – edgy, gritty, supernatural, breathless, and off-center. This is fiction that doesn’t so much make the reader think as it does assault the mind and the senses.

It’s one wild trip and a flaming good read.

The novel is four (or is it three?) interlocking stories. Kurt is a truck driver/sculptor suffering from amnesia and likely hauling his last load; his hobby is buying clothes at garage sales, but only the clothing containing trapped voices, calling for help. Corinne is a professional email spammer who comes to face a deadly kind of email spam. Grace is a tattoo artist and heroin addict, a woman who has run away from her husband and children not once but twice; she uses a new ink and changes everything. Stan is a hired assassin who kills by touching his victims, until he himself is touched to help save a life rather than destroy it. They briefly intersect with each other, and those intersections are the crucial heart of the novel.

I was thrown at first by the chapter numbering (it starts with chapter 34) but soon rolled with it and ultimately understood it as part of the story being told.

You’ll be hard-pressed to find overt Christian messages here. But you will find them, if you read hard enough, especially the message of redemption.

Finishing the book left me with one thought: “Wow! What a story!” But the reviewer and publisher blurbs omitted the most telling description of all.

Haunting.

If you want to be a face in the fire, you can upload a photo at Hines' web site.

I didn't. Reading the novel was sufficient.

Short Notes

A few short notes today.

My article on engagement -- employees or leadership -- is posted this morning at InsideWork.net. If you're interested or concerned about faith in the workplace, Inside Work is a good place to visit. Currently, it's featuring articles on public education, a different philosophy of success, causing God pain, charitable giving, and dealing with annoying people.

I've completed a short review on L.L. Barkat's Stone Crossings: Finding Grace in Hard and Difficult Places and posted it on Amazon. This is the book I had with me at the hospital when I had my ribs and lung attended to. The author is a writer and poet and writes for several print and online publications. If you're interested in exploring her work, a good place to start is her web site.

Currently I'm reading Faces in the Fire by T.L. Hines. He's written several books; this is the first of his I've read. It's an edgy, gritty supernatural thriller -- four interlocking stories about a man with no memory, an email spammer, a tattoo artist/heroin addict and a hit man. It's unlike any Christian fiction I've ever read -- Hines grabs the reader by the throat and doesn't let go.

Finally, I continue to mend after my bike crash. The last four days had been marked by doing very little except resting, reading and writing. The pain and soreness are lessening; I'm relying less on the prescription and more on over-the-counter stuff like Aleve, which is good. I plan to return to work on Tuesday; I have a check-up with the doctor on Wednesday. Thanks for your notes and prayers.