Book Review: “Holy Unhappiness” by Amanda Held Opelt
A Brave and Bold Writer
Writer and thinker Amanda Held Opelt has to be the most courageous author in the whole modern field of Christian publishing. There are two reasons why I have come to this conclusion. The first reason is that Held Opelt is working in the shadow of her highly acclaimed sister, the late Christian theologian Rachel Held Evans. The latter woman was known for making the bestseller list and turning in several volumes that verged on being given five-star ratings from critics in her tragically too-short life. (She died from complications of the flu only a few weeks shy of what would have been her 38th birthday.) It takes real guts to put yourself in similar shoes as to those of someone you were so closely related to because one will always be — fairly or unfairly — judged in comparison to how well you supplant the person who has passed on. The second reason is that Held Opelt is a strong truth-teller, which you can see evident in the very book up for review here itself: her sophomore volume Holy Unhappiness (which follows last year’s A Hole in the World.) In this book, Held Opelt openly and very bracingly talks about her marital problems. While she doesn’t give a laundry list of all the reasons why she sought out a marital counselor, it is a feat not for the timid to make the admission that one’s marriage might have been in trouble in public. For these two reasons, I cannot think of a person writing about Christian thought who is braver than Held Opelt.
You can consider her to be further brave when you realize that she thumbs her nose at the Christian publishing industry’s maxims with this work. Books of this sort are supposed to have a thesis statement that the book’s success can be measured against: Held Opalt instead offers none here and is quite candid about it. Instead, Holy Unhappiness is structured more like a journal rather than an essay collection. Either you’ll find that appealing or you won’t. In any event, the whole point of the book is to take on what Held Opelt calls the “emotional prosperity gospel” and the various myths it exhorts in a quest to make people happier. In another moment of candor towards the end of this book, she concludes that a book of this nature is probably not going to sell well because this is more a volume about leaning into the sadness one has rather than trying to obtain a more positive mindset about it. This is a book about learning to sit comfortably with unhappiness, and Held Opelt looks at areas such as jobs, marriage, the Church, and suffering as places where she admits that she has found much sorrow in her life. To that end, it’s true: this is not a book for everyone, and it certainly isn’t as focused and bracing as her previous book which looked at rituals associated with death and grieving. However, there is no such thing as a bad book when it comes to things written by the Held family.
Holy Unhappiness has been well-researched with many secondary sources (including the Bible itself) consulted. It is clear that this book is the product of a great deal of thought. That said, I did find that sometimes Held Opelt took a long time to get around to stating things that should be obvious to readers of a certain age. Here, she talks about her career in such a way that she comes to realize that work is indeed hard. I can say for myself that I learned very early on in my journalism career that Job Utopia doesn’t exist, so it seemed to me that Held Opelt was sort of stating things that should be readily appearant. However, I hope I’m not carping here because the author admits even in the introduction to this work that she wrote the book more for herself with the hopes that someone else may benefit from it.
When Held Opalt is in memoir mode, though, she has quite a personal story to tell for readers of all ages. She’s been all over the world working for aid organizations — and she relates those experiences quite vividly throughout the entire tome. She also talks quite candidly about her suffering from a mystery ailment when she was 18. In many ways, Held Opalt has come a long way in a year because she chastised readers for wanting to know about her family’s pain at losing Rachel in A Hole in the World, but here is laying herself openly bare. Her personal stories are usually quite fascinating, so when it’s time to turn her thoughts over to more theological concerns, the results can feel a little disappointing in comparison. For instance, she concludes that God is sharing in people’s pain rather than delighting in it for them doing something terrible (ie. the God of the rewards and punishments system). That’s hardly an original thought. However, I guess that it’s still a message that certain readers will need to hear.
Overall, I found Holy Unhappiness to be a little middling and a bit of a step down from A Hole in the World. Still, Held Opelt is worth reading because I’m sure that her best work is still in front of her. And even if there are a few misfires in Holy Unhappiness, she still sure is wearing a cast iron suit of armour with this work, ready to charge into battle with the forces that are making her sorrowful and depressed. To go back to what I said upfront, Amanda Held Opelt is fearless. That’s all the reason to read her. We need more Christian writers willing to write (and share) the books they want to create — and here’s hoping that this one finds an audience for reasons other than the fact that its author had a very famous sister. Holy Unhappiness is worthy of examination, warts and all, and might be the exact book you might need to read.
Amanda Held Opelt’s Holy Unhappiness: God, Goodness, and the Myth of the Blessed Life will be published by Worthy Books on July 18, 2023. I received an advance electronic galley of this book from the publisher in exchange for a fair and honest review.
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