I chose to read this book because I have, more than once in my life, gone through a spiritual crisis of faith. I was a teenage Catholic boy ( a long time ago) and remember grappling with questions about my particular religion and religion in general. I was interested to see where this book would take me.
Fifteen-year-old Jason Bock finds himself stifled by traditional religion. His father is a traditional Catholic and wants Jason to be like him. Jason doesn’t. In fact, Jason isn’t sure about the whole religion thing at all. His father forces him to attend a young person’s group at the church.
As a joke, he creates a religion, the “Chutegodians.” They worship the water tower at the center of town. He enlists his friend Shin to join. Then Magda Price, a girl he is really interested in but can never figure out how to approach, and even Henry Stagg, a violent, dangerous young man. The characters were not cardboard cutouts. They had some depth. And things never worked out quite as expected.
The joke soon takes on a life of its own. The religion that started out as a joke begins to be taken seriously, too seriously at times. This doesn’t happen to Jason, he is desperately trying to keep the lid on the situation. He discovers that although it is still just a lark to him, he has started something that he cannot control.
This was a more thoughtful book that I thought it would be at first. The ridiculousness of water towers as gods is not played for laughs. It is used as a way to explore what faith is and how ideas take on their own life. I keep circling back to that tired metaphor about not being able to put the genie back in the bottle. It was uncomfortable at times. But it made me think.
I am not totally in love with the book. Maybe because it made me so uneasy at times. I am not sure that this is for a seventh grade classroom library. Maybe high school. It is going to stay part of my personal library; even when uncomfortable the book made me ask some interesting questions.
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