Chronicles of the Widespot Café

By: Danney Clark / Narrated By: Larry Donald Peterson

Length: 6 hrs and 18 mins

A bit of a… not so pleasant surprise…

Okay, NOT that there’s ANYthing wrong with Christian fiction, some of my favorite romances are Christian, BUT:

“A very human story told from the perspective of a very talented and unusual man about his adventures in an unusual place under unusual circumstances. You’ll enjoy this unique style of alliteration and description”… sounds like magical realism at most, literary fiction at the very least. So I was a liiiiiiittle taken aback to find that Chronicles of the Widespot Café is verrrry much Christian fiction. Puff, puff, puff. There. That’s my disclaimer to describe my initial reaction upon starting my listen of the book.

So let’s take why I don’t like this book, especially as Christian fiction (and make no mistake: I’m kinda a prude when it comes to my dearly loved romances, so I like them as clean as it gets, which often means Christian). Everything, EVERYthing turns out okay, so that’s clearly not as life is. And that’s where that ends, and here is where the spoilers come in; so if you like books/stories where everything is glossed over, just a nice little listen, this book is for you, and do NOT read the following.

SPOILERS: Okay, so here’s what had me chagrined about Chronicles of the Widespot Café. We have a man who’s bumming around, no sense of home, and suddenly, with just a few words: He finds the one place he truly belongs, and he hears the few words it takes to make him Christian. Add to that, he suddenly has skills where he can take over all the chef duties at a diner/café.

And when there’s a death in the story, it doesn’t happen to a character we know (so that maybe we, the listeners might feel some grief), rather, a little off-side character never mentioned dies, so as the community grieves, our hero and the new pastor (who suddenly showed up to a community that neeeeeeded a pastor and couldn’t find one) are ready with words of comfort. The whole community finds solace by their words, not through acts of God.

And here’s the one that almost had me flinging my phone at the wall (again, SPOILER!): A wayward young woman who is broken in places by harms done her in the past, finds no healing from God. Instead, God engineers an accident so she suddenly forgets all that harm and is now ready to start life as a new Christian.

I don’t know about you, but I’ve got some pretty broken places, and I like a higher force (call it God if you will) who loves me enough to help heal those sore areas of my life. I sure as heck don’t wanna get hit by a truck and have my memories wiped away.

There. That’s why I found this audiobook unsatisfying. Plus there’s Larry Donald Peterson’s almost robotic narration (so flat, so tinny), and there was practically nothing that I felt from listening to this book.

And what, I ask you, is the good of an audiobook that doesn’t make you feel warmth, or affection, or even sorrow? Answer? A waste of time….