I'm overjoyed that my good friend Rob Stennett has won the Award of Merit from Christianity Today for his novel The Almost True Story of Ryan Fisher. (Here's CT's review of the book.) Stennett's hilarious book is about a real estate agent who joins a suburban church in order to reach the Christian home-buying market, and then has an even better idea: He'll plant his very own megachurch! (The working title for the book was The Impastor, and I've yet to forgive Rob's publisher for nixing it.) A.J. Jacobs, the author of The Year of Living Biblically, calls it "equal parts Tom Perotta and Rob Bell." Couldn't be a more apt description of what Rob is able to accomplish in his writing: it's a kind of pastoral satire.
The merit award is a runner-up prize. CT's top fiction award went to some writer named Marilynne Robinson. Who? What has she ever done worth doing?
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Thanks Patton (and beliefnet) for the kudos. Yeah, if you have to lose, I guess it's okay to lose to "Marilynne Robinson: world’s best writer of prose." I just hope someday to see a piece that says "Rob Stennett. The world's second best writer of prose." That would also make me smile.
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