A Review of Nickolas Butler’s “Little Faith”
The Doubter
If you have anything amounting to a religious bone in your body, there are probably going to be times in your life when you doubt the existence of God or whatever deity you follow. Doubt is a natural part of an evolving faith. And so we have a new novel by American writer Nickolas Butler called Little Faith that looks at doubt and how a human being can be challenged over the course of their lifetime to believe or not believe in the faith tradition that they are grounded in. It’s a pleasant book, despite its subject matter, because it ambles across the span of a year — four very different seasons — in examining the lines of a spiritual crisis that has befallen its main character.
The story concerns a man named Lyle Hovde, who lives in rural Wisconsin and has just entered his golden senior years. His infant son died at just nine months old years earlier, but he and his wife Peg were able to adopt a daughter named Shiloh who is now grown and has her own son, Isaac. Lyle loves Issac probably in more ways than a self-respecting grandfather should: together they enjoy trips to an apple orchard where Lyle works in his retirement and enjoys eating ice cream with a friend of Lyle’s called Hoot who, as the novel progresses, begins to struggle with a cancer diagnosis. Lyle and Isaac are almost inseparable as a pair. Well, as the plot would have it, Shiloh falls in love with a pastor named Stephen who is the head of a radical, cult-like church. Stephen believes that six-year-old Isaac has the power to heal people — though Isaac is also diabetic and needs treatment that neither Stephen or Shiloh want to provide. And so the novel repeatedly calls into question Lyle’s faith: does he believe that Isaac has healing powers? Can he find the wherewithal to believe in any God after the death of his infant son? Can he find the strength to pray over his friend Hoot as he transgresses further towards his possible final days on the planet?
There are no easy answers to any of these questions, which is something the novel addresses by, well, not answering them. The ending itself is a bit of a cliffhanger, and things in the plot remain unresolved. It’s up to the reader to “end” the story by determining whether certain lives continue living or are lost, or whether or not Shiloh was a good parent — albeit a very, very misguided one — or not. To that end, the novel is an apple that you can bite into and experience a certain kind of richness. It doesn’t hurt that a bit of poetry exists in this book, too: train whistles and rumblings down tracks nearby to Lyle and Peg’s home are frequently sounded (almost as possible warning klaxons) and images of rivers and lakes snaking through the remote landscape loom large. We get a bit of an education in the different types of apples an orchard can produce (and in this book’s case, there’s an awful lot of different varieties for a couple Lyle counts as his friends to look after as something to do in retirement). The book’s overall tone — at least, when Stephen isn’t on the scene — is one of soothing and calm, which is strange (but successful in its emotion) for a book that’s about the various ways one can lack faith.
In a sense, Little Faith is a very lowkey affair. There’s a nice lulling rhythm to the words on the page, and the novel keeps your interest because the human beings that populate it are generally likeable (flawed, but likeable), even though nothing really happens for large swaths of the book. In some ways, Little Faith might be just as successful as a novella or short story because a lot of it is made up of moments of human interconnectedness or being at one with nature. Despite that, though, the novel still isn’t a bore, even though there’s a part about midway through the book where Lyle delivers a load of apples to a grocery store in a neighbouring town and gets into two car accidents along the way that I didn’t get insofar as what the lengthy scene was doing in the novel. There was little symbolism that I could tease in this section, so perhaps the whole point of that section, if not the novel as a whole, is to just meander and get lost in the nooks and crannies of, well, life.
Still, Little Faith is an amazing read despite its small flaws and the fact that its ending doesn’t really resolve both the plot and the questions that the plot evokes. It’s a gentle book, one that doesn’t really scold or hold the characters accountable to either God or faith as a whole. If you’re an atheist, you’ll still be an atheist at the end of this read while those who are Christian will still be Christian at the end, too. That’s a way of saying you can read what you want into Little Faith. It offers no glib, easy to relate to answers to the predicament of its characters; nay, it doesn’t preach. That’s what makes it such a strong and refreshing read in Christian fiction (of which this book is probably not a part of, genre-wise): it doesn’t give you the short and pat resolution. You actually have to think about what you believe and whether or not a tree or a person can be saved in the end. For that, Little Faith is an astounding and perceptive read, and is a smartly considered book. Struggling with God? You won’t read this book and find your problems magically solved, but you may feel a whole lot better for reading this, which is praise of the highest order indeed. So experience the mystery. Read this book. Be amazed and wowed. You won’t be sorry.
Nickolas Butler’s Little Faith will be published by Ecco on March 5, 2019.
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Get in touch: zacharyhoule@rogers.com
