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Description:
"When God whispers, the wise listen. In this short story, a busy husband and father fails to heed the quiet voice of the Lord. In doing so, he experiences the loving admonition of God whispering loudly."
Over a half million copies!? What a waste of cyber paper.
So in this short a guy doesn't get promoted in part, I guess, because he is always going to his kids' school plays and stuff. He asks God in his head why his family demands so much, and promptly crashes his car.
He wakes up 15 years later from a coma and is able to hang out with his family immediately; no muscle atrophy problems or anything. It is explained that he talks to his family for a day and a half, trying to stay awake because he apparently overheard the doctor saying he will fall asleep and never wake up again. Cause doctors totally know everything about comas.
Anyway he is all proud of his family because they are super ultra Christian even though he worried that they might not be. His kids even tell him they were influenced by lectures he never actually gave them (and it is never explained why but fuuuck iiiiiit only got ten pages to write this short can't be just tying loose ends all day).
If you hadn't guessed by now, he obviously wakes up in the hospital after the car crash and was never actually in a coma. It was all just God telling him to stop being a dick. We know this not from the title, because we would be way too fucking stupid to get something SO subtle, but from God literally talking to him and saying, "Next time I whisper something at you, FUCKING LISTEN!"
OKAY, WE GET IT.
Ratings:
Why This Asshole? 5 out of 5. Okay first of all he just idly was like, "Dammit, I wish my job and family didn't conflict so much," and God's response is to instantly fuck him over in a terrible accident. Nice object lesson, God. Also, there is no indication before the crash that God tried to "whisper" at him and he didn't listen. It just starts right off with the accident. In fact, there is no God whispering in this story, just a lot of God yelling. And why is this guy so special? If you don't like your family that means God will choose you for a special faith-affirming vision cause you're a dick? Where is faith involved in this at all? There is nothing noble about this guy's transformation. He is a dick, then God says, "HEY I'M REAL AND YOUR FAMILY IS IMPORTANT!" That's got to mean you're in God's remedial class or something. I guess that means atheists don't actually exist, because there would be a hell of a lot more terrible accidents followed by people saying, "Oh, God straight up told me what to do with my life. I mean, I still have free will...I think? But it doesn't really mean much at this point."
Telling Instead of Showing: 5 out of 5. There are like three lines of dialogue in this entire story, and they are all God telling the dude the moral of the story. We never find out what the important life lessons his children learned are or anyone's name or anything. Even when he overhears the doctor talking about him, this scene is not shown, but simply told to us. The doctor exists in some aether disconnected from space or time or the plot of the story. When did this doctor come? What tests did he do? What did he say to this nameless man? When he wakes out of his coma there are youths around his bed. It is later revealed that they are his children and their spouses, but how many? What do they look like? How old are they? The only thing we know about these shapeless people is that he is proud of them for being Christian--because he told us.
What's the Point? 5 out of 5. So he sees the future, in which his family is super awesome and Christ-loving. This happened in his absence of 15 years. So, my only question is...how the fuck does that mean he is spending too much time at work!? They were fine without him for 15 years, right? At this point, he should probably try to stay away from them as much as possible.
But I know what you're thinking. That's why the author put in the weird part about how the kids remember advice he never gave them. Well, that's not a fucking explanation for anything except that the author realized the very thing I just pointed out and tried to patch it with something that makes absolutely no fucking sense. God works in mysterious ways! And by mysterious I mean ultra blunt. Like he'll fuck you up and possibly cripple you if you mess with him.
Overall: 2 out of 5. I know I am contradicting the 1000+ 4.5 star Amazon reviews here, but seriously those are all just, "Hey this story has the word God in it. How inspiring!" And before you call me out on being a dick, I know this is true because I have received reviews from people that were like, "This is so inspiring!" because they obviously didn't bother to read the end of the story where heaven is revealed as a dystopia. SPOILERS! But don't get all pissed off. It's just fiction.
Seriously it's a weird story. It's not my favorite but if you want to check it out go to amazon.com/author/a.c.blackhall
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