Have A Little Faith
Mitch Albom  • Hyperion

Most people know Mitch Albom through the bestselling Tuesdays with Morrie, a moving account of Albom’s relationship with dying professor Morrie Schwartz, and his fictional follow-up, The Five People You Meet in Heaven.

Albom’s latest, Have A Little Faith, is another sentimental favorite. Like its predecessors, Faith has a high-fructose content. An aging rabbi from Albom’s youth asks the writer to deliver his eulogy, even though the men haven’t seen each other in years. At the same time, Albom encounters a onetime drug dealer and convict who has redeemed himself as a minister to Detroit’s poor. As he gets to know both men and both faiths, the author learns life lessons that he imparts to readers.

To my surprise, I enjoyed this latest from the onetime Sports Illustrated writer. While I have to scratch my head about Albom’s serial encounters with Central Casting characters (Morrie Schwartz and Faith’s Reb and Pastor Henry), the book serves up simple lessons that are hard to resist. Put away your cynicism and you may feel likewise.           

BY HOWARD WILLIS

Noah’s Compass
Anne Tyler  • Knopf

Fifth grade teacher Liam Pennywell, recently laid off, is attacked in his apartment, and awakens with no memory of the incident.

To regain his memory, 60-year-old Liam engages a free-spirited “rememberer” he meets in a neurologist’s office; as their relationship deepens, he is forced to confront the isolation of his own life, which has been marked by unfulfilled ambition and fractured relationships.

Tyler, who won the Pulitzer Prize in 1989 for the masterful Breathing Lessons, specializes in closely observed, carefully wrought portraits of unremarkable characters, often people in mid-life who are forced to question their own purpose. Noah’s Compass hews to that recipe. While most of the action is interior—there’s Liam’s growing awareness of a chronic, low-grade sadness, and his fumbling attempts to change—for Tyler fans, that’s not a problem. This is another treat from an exceptional writer.

BY EDWARD N. HEALY

By Marjorie Preston

Marjorie Preston is a contributing editor of Global Gaming Business magazine and managing editor of Casino Connection Atlantic City.