So far this has been an excellent year for Mormon novels. Margaret Young/Darius Gray, Benson, Eric Sam., Hughes and Card (as usual), and novels I haven't read yet by John Bennion and Linda Adams. Well, add to the list The Dinner Club.

While this is only Taylor's second novel (outside co-writing a juvenile action series), he has been a presence in LDS literature for the entire decade. The Invisible Saint (1990), was his first novel, a very funny self-published fantasy/fable, including the only satire of the LDS publishing market I have ever seen. (See Jeff Needle's review of the book in the archives). Around that same time Taylor and his friend Stan Zenk became editors and part-owners of Aspen Books, where Taylor ghostwrote Betty Eadie's Embraced By the Light, which became a national best-seller. In 1996 they bought the entire company, but then sold it soon thereafter. While they were there in the early and mid-90s, Aspen put out some wonderful Mormon literature, including Margaret Young's Salvador, and books by Doug Thayer, Donlu Thayer, Samuel Taylor, Marilyn Brown, Davis Bitton, Daniel Peterson, Lowell Bennion, Laurel Thatcher Ulrich, Emma Lou Thayne, Maureen Beecher, Carol Lynn Pearson, Bill Hartley, Robert F. Smith, Robert Kirby, and Benson Parkinson, and the "Christmas for the World" short story collection. Aspen seemed like it was going to be one of our great hopes, publishing quality, adventurous, but basically faithful fiction.

Unfortunately, Aspen has done very little since Taylor and Zenk sold it, just publishing Benson's sequel, as far as I know. Taylor is also the creator, writer, and voice for the nationally syndicated radio show "This American Minute". (Thanks to aml postings by Stan Zenk and Morgan Adair for this information).

So anyway, back to the book. To start out with, Taylor is a very funny writer, and anyone glancing over the back cover of The Dinner Club might come away with the mistaken impression that this is comic novel in the mold of The Invisible Saint. Well, there are funny moments, especially at the beginning. But the book's core is a series of very unfunny tragedies which befall the central character, and the way he rallies his family together, increases his faith, and is blessed with strength and unexpected blessings from the Lord.

Early on the big-rig trucker-protagonist, Chris Young, is hit by a wave of unexplained nausea after stops to help the driver of another car. He goes into a bushy ravine on the side of the road to empty his stomach, where he discovers a car that had driven off the road the day before, with a woman inside close to death. He calls the paramedics who are already on the scene helping the man in the first accident, and the woman is saved. His friends later tease him, saying usually the Lord sends us good feelings, not nausea, when He sends a message. This story sets the tone for the entire book: the Lord using unpleasant circumstances to draw his children to places they need to be.

The central tragedy is that Chris's wife, without much explanation, skips town with one of their friends, abandoning the family. Taylor describes the devastation this act creates in vivid and heartbreaking detail. At the same time, his trucking business begins to fall apart. Fortunately, Chris is blessed with a supportive ward and parents-in-law, and he develops a relationship with his Heavenly Father which goes far beyond what he had before. Taylor does a great job in creating an engrossing plot and characters I care about; I was pulled into their world.

The voice of the novel might not appeal to some. It is written in first-person, with Chris telling the story. The narration reminds me of a Holden Caulfield-kind of style that I often see in juvenile novels, a smart (but put-upon) young person commenting wryly on themselves and the people around them. It is the same kind of flip style that helped to make The Invisible Saint funny, and keeps the mood from getting too dark in The Dinner Club. I didn't mind it, but some, especially those with more literary tastes, might be put off.

Another thing that might annoy some, especially someone who has gone through these kind of tragedies, is how well (and how quickly!) things get resolved in the end. The speedy reconciliation of Chris with his estranged parents is a good case in point. I found it hard to begrudge the poor guy, after all he went through in the first three-quarters of the book, but it did seem a bit forced. Still, the scenes of reconciliation and forgiveness are beautifully done, and I'm glad they are in there.

I wouldn't doubt that the publisher, Foreword Press, is simply Taylor's self-publication, as he did with The Invisible Saint. Good for him for getting his work on the market. It does result in a few typos a bigger publisher would have caught, but nothing major. It isn 81ft something that Signature would publish, and there is probably too much, "questionable material" (a good High Priest threatening his daughter with a starting pistol, acceptance of a grandmother living in sin, talk of how righteous parents can scare a daughter out of the Church, etc.) for Deseret Books to publish. It is the kind of thing that Aspen would publish if they were still actively publishing.

Most of all, I think the book does a great job at showing us a disintegrating marriage. My brother went through a similar experience, which probably why the novel resonated so well with me. Another powerful voice has been added to the small chorus of good LDS writers, hooray.

Andrew Hall
Pittsburgh, PA