When an author designates God as the omniscient narrator, chances are good the narrative will veer toward pomposity. Thomas's second novel (after the popular The Angel Carver), though by turns provocative and cleverly imagined, is no exception. God has taken an interest in Sheila Jericault, who has recently lost her soul. Thirty-year-old Sheila prides herself on being the kind of campaign manager who can take a scruple-free sow's ear of a political candidate and turn him into an electable silk purse. Her client as the book opens is Kip Coxx, whom she is cheerfully and cynically maneuvering toward nomination as a Connecticut congressman. But after she nearly dies from a sudden hemorrhage caused by an obscure medical condition, she begins to question the substance of her life. Following her new philosophy to ""be a better person, do good in the world and be happy,"" she meets an odd assortment of people that she believes have been sent her way by a divine hand. They are a Sri Lankan woman who has been literally enslaved by her employers; a dairy worker whose spiritual transformation mirrors Sheila's own; and the violet-eyed surgeon who saved her life. God relates these developments as they occur, and occasionally he can be a pretty funny guy, as when he confesses to complete befuddlement concerning the relationship between the unemployment rate and the stock market, but the arch superiority of his voice can grate upon and distance the reader. While Thomas sometimes artfully wields humor to create an emotional, even fallible deity, God is often loquacious, with countless digressive interjections and parenthetical asides that distract from, rather than illuminate, the workings of Sheila's fate and faith. In fact, God could be mistaken for a writer of slushy romances, he describes Sheila as ""blessed with eyes that matched a clear sky on an autumn day, and with wavy hair, reddish gold, that shot sunlight back to the sun."" By the time the saccharine ending comes along, such overwriting has swelled to a crescendo of sentimentality. (June)
