I purchased a copy of this book because of some positive buzz I had heard about it. It won the 2001 Marilyn Brown Novel Award from AML (the Association for Mormon Letters), with Marilyn saying that it is "THE PERFECT mainstream LDS lit. book. It's not high brow lit, but it's really good. It's a book that could be written only once, and this is it! I'm glad Jeff did such a good job." On AML's discussion list, Valerie Holladay added: "I just want to give Mormonville my highest praise. I was fortunate enough to read this book as an unpublished manuscript and thought the author did a terrific job. I don't have a copy yet myself but it's definitely a book I want in my library. As an incentive to some of you out there, I know some readers who were horribly offended by it :-) But I know others who feel it says good things about what Mormon fiction can do."

Well, I read it, and found it to be a bit of a disappointment.

Certainly, Call (whose day job is a sportswriter) writes much better than I do, but his fiction still seems rather amateurish, sometimes to the point of being cringe-making. The plot--a non-LDS New York City sportswriter/investigative journalist is sent to live in Utah County for a year to write an expose of Mormonism--is intriguing but not all that well executed. Every let's-have-prime-rib-at-the-stakehouse cliche about Gentile misunderstanding of LDS terminology and culture makes an appearance in this book. Towards the end, when some old BYU roommates are getting together for a bachelor party at a Provo pizza joint and joking about BYU giving tuition refunds to students who graduate single, it occurred to me that maybe this is a realistic novel; maybe we do just keep saying the same things over and over.

Now for the real nit-picking. The fictitious Utah County town of Helaman that the protagonist Luke Manning moves to is initially (p. 22) described as being west of the Interstate but later (p. 39) seems to be described as having east bench type neighborhoods. I guess fictitious locales by definition aren't supposed to fit perfectly into the real geography, but I had trouble picturing what Helaman was really like. At a country dance, Luke is said to dance like "Herman Munster in moonboots" (p. 225). I can't help wondering if Call didn't borrow this from Sports Illustrated's description of the scrambling abilities of Doug Flutie's successor at quarterback for Boston College in an article on BC's loss to BYU in the 1985 Kickoff Classic. (Actually, I think SI's description was "Herman Munster in snowshoes", and perhaps Herman Munster is enough of an icon of clumsiness that that simile is now in the public domain.) When Luke's publisher says he has the potential to be "the Mormon Church's version of Salmon (sic) Rushdie" (p. 18) the image of _The Satanic Verses_ was, for me, a little tainted by that of a fillet swimming in balsamic vinegar. And, finally, as someone who was probably over 30 before he realized that people weren't saying "for all intensive purposes", I have no right to be bothered by this, but a pet peeve of mine is reading sentences like: "Holding the musty rope in his right hand, he stuck his left leg through the window and repelled down the face of the building." (p. ix) ( )

Pretty predictable conversion story, but still enjoyable. ( )

Fun book. If you are not LDS you amy have to find someome who is to help expalin things. Laughed alot. ( )