The Burnt Fool

Frank Lynn's debut novel is a wry look at the inscrutable world of extremist faith, and the lingering reach of its warrant. For twenty years and more, Dave Jennings has been One of the Chosen, eagerly sacrificing his freedoms on the altar of Truth, preaching the revealed Word, towing the line. His was a life for the Lord, he a willing paradigm of the way volition can be stripped out and sequestrated. But now he's been saved. And yet it's only since escaping that he's realized just how great cults can be, when you're alone at night, feeling low, and in need of a surreal anecdote or two to lift the mood. All those plausible first premises upon which they quietly, inexorably, layer by layer, build the most bizarre edifices of numinous bollocks; the friendly life-line that, unnoticed, has somehow mutated into a strangling umbilical; the schizophrenic, flip-flopping edicts about what you can and then suddenly can't do,?which you conscientiously follow?- all of it becomes an enormous self-deprecating joke, when you've gotten out. And now that he has, normality finally beckons. And then Lou pushes the divorce. What always remains, of course, is the pain of being unable to reach those you love. Because, as Dave is to learn, fundamentalist barbs hook deep. The Burnt Fool?is by turns a witty and poignant dissection of the collateral of purblind lives lived for and in the future; with provocative prose and deliciously idiosyncratic imagery, it builds to a nuanced denouement that is a haunting paean to regret.