Book Review: “The Salt of the Universe” by Amy Leach
“Fun”damentalism?
Amy Leach is a genius. I can pronounce this because I have read her third and latest book, The Salt of the Universe, and I cannot make heads or tails of it. I’m not even sure what this book is. Is it a memoir because it looks at the author’s past? Or is it an essay collection or a collection of randomness, of inconsequential detail? What is this book going on about? I think it’s telling that in this book’s final pages, Leach herself writes: “[I]f you didn’t like this book, try reading it again but out loud, as loud as you can. Though if you still don’t like my book after shouting it to yourself, that’s okay, I understand. Sometimes I am not on my own wavelength either.” For a minute there, I was worried because — not to brag — I’m intelligent. I graduated with high honors from one of Canada’s most challenging university programs: Carleton University’s Bachelor of Journalism program. Still, sometimes, I’ll walk into a room and find that I’m the dimmest light in it. People are sometimes way more intelligent than I am, so I can only conclude that that is true with this book and this author. Some things are above my pay grade. The Salt of the Universe is one of them.
Essentially, The Salt of the Universe was supposed to be a book about fundamental Christianity and how the author left the Seventh-Day Adventist Church because it was too out there as a religious denomination. Leach details how the movement’s founders forbade congregants from drinking coffee, tea, or eating pickles. I understand: no coffee would be enough to drive me over the edge. However, Leach starts riffing on inconsequential things, such as the fun “fact” that hippopotamuses migrate from Africa to Uruguay. I think that’s what I read because I was being bludgeoned by the text’s randomness and inability to make a lot of sense. It might have helped to take the author’s advice and scream the book out loud. Now, I’m trying not to slight the author in the least. After all, this is her third book published, so she’s doing something right. Still, I often didn’t know what the book was talking about as it would go from point A to point E by zipping to point M and backtracking to point B. And, my gosh, Leach loves her run-on sentences that go on and on and on and on and on and on — like so.
Getting back to the point, what I thought this book would be about and what it is about are two very different things. This isn’t a book about leaving the church, though Leach admits to doing that here, which is probably why she feels compelled to drop the odd f-bomb here and there entirely uncensored. (This is a way of saying that vulgarity is rather unladylike. But that’s just me.) In any event, this book meanders on all points, like someone driving in the right lane on a freeway before veering off and crossing the grassy meridian, right into opposing traffic before rolling over into the ditch and bursting into flames. I’m trying to grasp if this read has a unifying logic, but I can’t find one. So, I’d like to tell you what this book is about, but I can’t do it. Amy Letch is too much of a genius for me. Either that, or I’m too dumb for Amy Letch. I sincerely hope it’s the former, so someone can go ahead and give her a MacArthur Fellowship. If it’s the latter, I might need Ritalin — as was suggested as a course of prescription in my hyperactive youth — after all.
I don’t want to be cranky about this book because I didn’t understand it. The point is, there doesn’t seem to be any point to this. It just goes off into random places — thoughts of the author’s youth, concertos she wished she could play on her violin, the five or six languages that she can profess to speak, and so on — and it’s up to the reader to decide to go on this journey with Leach or not. I hope I’m not deterring anyone from taking a chance on this, so here’s my recommendation: find a copy of the book at your local library or go into one of those bookstores with comfy couches and chairs. Read precisely one chapter of this short read. Any chapter will do. See if it catches your fancy. If it doesn’t, no harm or foul, you can put the book back on the shelf for the next person. If you do, holy mackerel, you’re brilliant and probably have a Ph.D. or something! Congratulations on understanding this! Me? I have to sit and sigh and wonder why the sky is blue, and the grass is green. I’m sure there are answers to those questions, like an answer to the mysteries behind this book and what they might mean. I’m sure someone more intelligent than I might figure that out.
Amy Leach’s The Salt of the Universe: Praise, Songs, and Improvisations will be published by Farrar, Straus and Giroux on August 6, 2024.
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