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| Category: Fiction:Literary |
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| About the Book | |
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Imperishable Bliss is a tragicomic account of the efforts of an unnamed citizen in the final third of the American 20th century to find God. He is the brooding and fretful survivor of a failed attempt at suicide, and captive to a religious vocation as insistently obscure as the unexplained death of his best friend. In a career that devolves through picaresque sieges of evangelism, retreat, Biblical exegetics and physical sacrifice, he is tormented by the company of women and his perplexity about their intentions, which are likely to be subversive. The reader who described Imperishable Bliss as "maybe the saddest story I ever read" also called it "very subtle and very funny."
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| Reviews | |
Bliss speaks to those who love language. It soars to a place books rarely go. ...(A) devastating portrait of a religious fanatic, but done in such solemn and sympathetic tones that the reader has no defense... (T)he overall narrative packs a terrific punch. It was a great read for me. This is a very powerful, original and gripping novel, but it is going to upset some readers. It upset me... Along the way, the narrator meets a cast of extraordinary people; some want to hinder his quest, others want to be a part of it . . . Alongside the protagonist's quest to mathematically calculate the year the world will end . . . disturbing opinions are dropped in casually as Tingle successfully depicts a deranged man.
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| About the Author | |
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The author is a native of Iowa, born in 1938. He arrived at fiction writing late in life, having spent the earlier years immersed in actual human intercourse and accumulating the stores of chagrin that now provide the inspiration for his work. |