Now and then /

In these spiritual memoirs, novelist, essayist and Presbyterian minister Buechner explores his belief that God speaks to us through events. The first volume is devoted to his childhood, years at Princeton and inclination toward the ministry--according to PW, his ``reflections on death and bereavement are especially felicitous.'' In the second, he ``issues a graceful invitation to share the insights of a contemporary God-centered person'' as he recalls his years as a seminary student, school minister and developer of Phillips Exeter Academy's religion department. (Oct.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Novelist and semi-retired minister Buechner made a promising start on his autobiography with the story of his early years in The Sacred Journey (1982); but he fills the pages of this slender successor volume with generalizations, sermonettes, and notes on his publishing career. When he comes to the crucial moments of his maturity--ordination, marriage, fatherhood--Buechner runs away from concrete description and into rhapsodic meditation, as if trying to safeguard his privacy. Meeting his future wife, he writes: ""She was slender. She was nearly as tall as I was. She loved horses and the out-of-doors. Her face looked full of light."" He then quotes Donne, ""all measure, and all language I should passe,/ Should I tell what a miracle she was."" And that's about as close as Buechner will let us approach either his wife or his married life. He spends nine years at Exeter as a chaplain and religion teacher, but gives us no real sense of what the students, the faculty, or the New Hampshire landscape were like. He fathers three daughters, whom he dearly loves but never presents as flesh-and-blood individuals, preferring instead to brood about the sweet pains of parenthood. Buechner does a lot better with thumbnail sketches of people (seminary professors, parishioners, etc.) outside the circle of his family. But a few such dramatically effective pages are not enough to redeem a book that is both thin and padded. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.