It must be intimidating to write a book on marriage. Store shelves
are groaning under the weight of titles that claim to have the key to a
happy marriage, or a biblical marriage or a gospel-centered marriage. To
rise above such a crowded field a book needs to offer something
different, something unique, something that distinguishes it from the
pack. Mark and Grace Driscoll have jumped into the fray with their new
book Real Marriage: The Truth About Sex, Friendship, and Life Together
and the distinguishing feature of their book is its gut honesty, its
sheer vulnerability. The Driscolls invite the reader deep into their own
marriage and attempt to answer difficult, intimate questions—what they
say are the questions you’d be too embarrassed to ask your pastor.
What Book Is It?
Before
I look at the book’s content, I feel that I need to speak briefly about
the book as a book. What quickly becomes clear is that Real Marriage
suffers from a lack of clear identity, a problem that may stem from
what appears to be rushed or otherwise ineffective editing. I point
these things out not to be petty but because they effect the
final product.
In the first place, there is a kind of
sloppiness and inconsistency to the book. One example of this is the way
the chapters vary so much in style, some being very personal with
others being abstract and coldly statistical; even the inline
subheadings can vary from chapter-to-chapter (e.g. italics in one
chapter, all caps in the next). There are also factual errors, like when
the Driscolls state that Solomon was the child born of David and
Bathsheba’s adultery (when, in fact, that child died and Solomon was
born later); there are errors in footnoting, like when a footnote
contains no reference to what they have stated; there are errors in
punctuation where a statement ends with a question mark, and errors in
flow where a chapter references things to come that do not
actually come. Keep Reading >>>
No comments:
Post a Comment