Fall Book Study
  Thursday, November 19 at 7:00 pm

More than twenty  years ago, just after Handling Sin was published, a St. Paul’s audience was treated to a lecture by the novel’s  author, Michael Malone.  Michael won’t be with us this time, but we will commemorate the event by re-reading the novel and  then meeting to discuss it on November 19 at 7:00 pm at Dorothy Pope’s home. Everyone is invited. It’s a lengthy  book, so  you might want to start reading  soon.

 For a preview, read the following excerpt from curledup.com:

 

 . . . An intelligent, phenomenally  funny book,  Handling Sin takes its readers on a rollicking modern Southern odyssey,  following the reluctant adventures of insurance salesman Raleigh Whittier Hayes. Author Michael Malone . . . exhibits  incredible mastery of the novel  form, navigating the story’s maze of surprise twists with such boisterous alacrity that readers have very little chance of losing their  way at any time from start to finish.

Raleigh Hayes considers himself to be the only rational person, other than his Aunt Victoria, in the whole motley crew of the extended Hayes family . . . .  Raleigh  himself holds to a sensible diet, jogs regularly to stay fit, and insures himself to the gills with an eye to life’s inevitable outcome.  His relatives steadfastly deny his offers of insurance, refusing to jinx themselves by acknowledging death’s certainty.

When [Raleigh]  opens a fortune cookie with the unpleasant message that  “You will go completely to pieces by the end of the month,”  he has no idea of what the fates have in store for him in that short  span of time.  Events quickly conspire to turn his carefully sane life topsy-turvy . . . .