Off the Shelf: The Shack

The first thing I want to lay out there is that The Shack will not be for everyone.  It's a work of religious fiction that deals with some very heavy themes, and the page total is not an extremely high one for me (my average fun-reading book runs 300-500 pages), but this book is not an easy read. 

The Shack or The Shack: Where Tragedy Confronts Eternity
William P. Young
256 pages

The story being told is a tear-jerker of dealing with a horrible personal tragedy mixed with themes of Christianity and forgiveness (I think the book's religious basis could potentially cross religions, but the base values used in the book are Christian).  The themes being dealt with are not light or cheerful, and wrapping your head around some of the concepts, even as simple as they sound in hindsight and written in novel form, makes this book a relatively difficult read.

That being said, even while I cried through a lot of this novel, I found this book to be an extremely fantastic read.  Even if you view religion from a more schoolastic approach of study, I think you could find this book a really interesting read, and anyone going through a loss that is at all religious could really find this book helpful, as it tackles dealing with drastic loss and balancing that with the view that God is a loving, caring, forgiving power.

For those that find the book to be a little too hard to wrap your head around (I consider myself smarter than the average dodo, and there were parts I had to read and re-read to really come to grasp what was being said), The Shack was made into a film in 2017 that I have watched since reading the book.  It is extremely well done and parallels the book nicely, but I will say the book is the far more detailed and better of the two, but there is only so much that can be done in the length of time a movie allows.  But the movie does make the heavy themes easier to understand, and it is always nice that is stars some big names in it (Avatar's Sam Worth plays the lead, and Octavia Spencer from The Help and Hidden Figures plays another important role, while Tim McGraw plays a minor role and also functions as a narrator).

All that being said, I loved this book.  I picked it up blindly at Walmart in July, never having heard of it, as the only thing to remotely attract my attention.  After reading it, then re-reading it, I hunted down the movie, then re-read the book again.  I will admit that I cried, a lot, both reading and watching The Shack, and I know this book will be polarizing and have a list of people with zero interest in it after finding out that it's religious fiction, but I honestly loved the book, have it featured prominently on my bookshelf, and know I'll read it again.

Target-audience wise, while some teens may like the book, with the difficult themes, I really think this book is more for adults.  While I think that anyone could enjoy this book, even as just an interesting way to look at dealing with loss and forgiveness, I think those who are at least open to religion will accept this book's central themes more, but gender-wise, both men and women can definitely find worth in this book.

~*~