Sunday Books & Culture - September 7, 2024
This week’s reviews include Amie K. Runyan’s historical fiction about Claire Eiffel “Mademoiselle Eiffel” and Sarah McCammon’s memoir about leaving the evangelical church in “Exvangelicals.”
Vanessa Sekinger edits the Books & Culture section
MADEMOISELLE EIFFEL
By Aimie K. Runyan
Published by William Morrow Paperbacks (September 10, 2024)
Paperback $18.99
Audiobook $21.25
Reviewed by David Arndt
Gustave Eiffel was a famous French engineer who created such masterpieces as the Maria Pia Bridge in Portugal, the Statue of Liberty in New York, and the most famous of all structures, the Eiffel Tower in Paris. His genius and brilliance helped to create bridges, buildings, and other structures around the globe. Behind this distinguished gentleman was a loyal and supportive woman, his eldest daughter, Claire Eiffel. Aimie Runyan tells her story in her latest novel, Mademoiselle Eiffel.
At the beginning of the novel, tragedy strikes the Eiffel household when Claire’s beloved mother dies. Though she is just 14, Claire understands that this is a profound change in station for herself. Her mother was the devoted supporter and organizer of the family, keeping the household schedules, arranging dinners and meetings, and doing everything in her power to keep their house operating smoothly. Now, all this falls to her daughter to arrange.
Claire selflessly and obediently steps into her mother’s place becoming a surrogate mother to her siblings and a private secretary to her father. Although some family members question whether she should be forced to do so, Claire dismisses their doubts and concerns herself with the wellbeing of her family.
As the years continue and Claire successfully manages the household, her life is disrupted yet again when her father confides to her that his talented assistant, Adolphe Salles, will become the heir to the Eiffel legacy in place of her brother.
Claire initially sees this as a betrayal to the family, but as she examines her brother closely, she comes to realize the wisdom of their father and understands that her brother is neither devoted nor talented enough to the family business to allow it to continue to prosper.
When her father suggests that Claire marry Adolphe not only to let her to make her own way in the world but as her own means of supporting the family, she carefully considers the match.
Mademoiselle Eiffel is a story that shows that behind a great and talented person is always someone who supported and encouraged them. Claire’s stepping into her deceased mother’s place allows Gustave to continue to create wonderful and beautiful architectural monuments. It also allows Claire to support her family’s legacy in her own way by seeing to the details of the household, thus freeing her father from its daily duties. She comes to find that not everyone’s story is the same, and she finds solace and content in her own unique path.
THE EXVANGELICALS
By Sarah McCammon
Published by St. Martin’s Press (March 19, 2024)
Hardcover $30.00
Kindle $14.99
Audiobook $13.12
Reviewed by Martin Davis
Books that examine, criticize, and attempt to comprehend the world of evangelicals are not lacking. Historian Mark Noll, who wrote The Scandal of the Evangelical Mind, and writer Kristin Kobes Du Mez, who wrote John Wayne and Jesus, are two of the better-known examples.
These two titles sit atop a heaping bibliography that chronicles evangelicalism’s countercultural framework and outsized political influence, as well as its vapid intellectual underpinnings.
As a former evangelical, I haven’t been shy about adding my own concerns and critiques of evangelicalism over my career.
Is there any more to say? Sarah McCammon’s new book, The Exvangelicals, offers no new research or analysis that would further the way scholars and policymakers understand fundamentalism. However, it is a fresh take on a difficult and divisive issue, and it brings readers inside the evangelical world as no prior book has.
An NPR reporter who grew up in an evangelical Kansas City family, McCammon draws fully on the known bibliography of books about evangelicalism. In that way, her work serves as a survey of the ground that has been covered over the years, which will benefit scholars and non-scholars alike.
She goes a step further, however, by telling in very personal terms her struggles with evangelicalism. These are the most poignant moments in the book, especially when she shares the letters and discussions she had with her mother over the years.
It’s this personal narrative that makes McCammon’s book distinctive. She takes the reader on her personal evolution out of evangelicalism, a process that took decades. It’s an honest discussion that those who have left evangelicalism — “Exvangelicals,” as she names them — will understand.
Those not familiar with evangelicalism will gain an appreciation of the difficulties people who leave evangelicalism face. And readers will see for themselves the significant damage that evangelicalism causes people trapped inside.
The book starts slowly, but gains steam quickly as McCammon gets into her own story. The chapters dealing with sexuality and her personal struggle with “purity culture” is McCammon at her best.
Her keen observations explain how evangelicals make all youth feel guilty about their sexuality, but how women are more profoundly affected. Not only are women forced to deny their own sexual impulses, she explains, but they are also expected to prevent men from acting on theirs. It’s this paradox — women must are required to suppress their sexuality, but men are excused for pursuing theirs because men are, apparently, incapable of controlling themselves — McCammon explains, that has taken a devastating toll on generations for young people.
In McCammon’s case, her own struggles led to a divorce from her evangelical husband after 16 years of marriage and two children.
Noll’s classic study of evangelicalism argues that: “The scandal of the evangelical mind is that there is not much of an evangelical mind.”
Noll, I would argue, has quite correctly identified what has led evangelicalism into its current nihilistic state. The reader wonders if McCammon would have left the tradition were it as thoughtful about the deep spiritual questions we each wrestle with if evangelicalism exhibited more flexibility and reflection.
McCammon reminds us, however, that though evangelicalism in intellectual vacuous, evangelicals do care about their children. They simply haven’t been shown a better way to balance deeply held beliefs with respect for diversity of thought.
As McCammon’s mother wrote to her young daughter during a particularly hard time, “I’m trying, Sarah.”
McCammon’s book balances the criticism, anger, and truth-telling that evangelicals will find hard to read — and in all truth probably won’t read because evangelical churches will likely brand it as unacceptable heresy — with compassion for the people who raised and nourished her.
McCammon wants to find a way forward with her family. Her family, however, is gripped by a world that cannot accept those who reject evangelical Christianity. And for this reason, they cannot accept her.
And that is the real tragedy — and danger — of the evangelical mind.
Martin Davis is Editor-in-Chief of the FXBG Advance.
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