What do you think?
Rate this book
The Natural Order of Things
The Natural Order of Things, comprised of 15 interconnected stories, is properly thought of as a novel in the tradition of Sherwood Anderson's Winesburg, Ohio or John Steinbeck's The Pastures of Heaven but with a gothic sensibility. The novel concerns the adventures and exploits of a small group of students, teachers, employees, and priests at a Jesuit prep school in a dying industrial city. Its stories harbor star quarterbacks who sabotage important games, the head coach with a gambling addiction wagering on his own team, an elderly priest suffering from acute memory loss who dabbles in heretical beliefs, and others who swim against the tides of society's proscribed roles. "The Black Death of Gentile da Foligno" was nominated for a Pushcart Prize by author Thomas E. Kennedy. Another story, "Uncreated Creatures," was nominated for a StorySouth Million Writers Award by the editor of The Stickman Review. A third story, "The Spy" won second prize for the Lorain County/Ohio Arts Council Award, judged by Nancy Zafris, editor of The Kenyon Review.
400 pages, Paperback
First published November 30, 2012
8 people are currently reading
148 people want to read
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews
February 1, 2013
We don’t read fiction to feel better about the world. We read to understand it. Lucky for Kevin Keating, because his debut novel, The Natural Order of Things is anything but uplifting. Set at a Jesuit boys’ prep school in an unnamed decrepit city, the book is comprised of fifteen connected stories that trace a moment in time as seen from the eyes of students, teachers and parents, all with motive, all hopeless. If optimism is your thing, go back to Primetime. Otherwise, pour a drink and settle in, for you’ll be pulled senseless into a twisted tunnel that Keating has perceptively and meticulously dug.
What is the natural order of things? According to Keating’s world, there’s a great deal of evil. Between the high school—where a teacher seduces a student and boys lock an old priest in a basement closet—and The Zanzibar Towers—an unkempt apartment building where teenagers and adults alike go for parties and prostitutes—it’s a sort of underworld of poverty and debasement that we enter into with the first story from which we are at no point released.
Read the rest here: http://ampersandreview.com/2013/01/th...
What is the natural order of things? According to Keating’s world, there’s a great deal of evil. Between the high school—where a teacher seduces a student and boys lock an old priest in a basement closet—and The Zanzibar Towers—an unkempt apartment building where teenagers and adults alike go for parties and prostitutes—it’s a sort of underworld of poverty and debasement that we enter into with the first story from which we are at no point released.
Read the rest here: http://ampersandreview.com/2013/01/th...
September 15, 2016
Keating's pitch-black sense of humor entertained me in every chapter of this over-the-top romp through a wasted, Cleveland-like city's Jesuit school. While this is less a novel than a collection of loosely connected short stories, each and every tale mixes humor with scorn for a cocktail that goes down smooth and mostly satisfies. Those looking for a tidy finish will be disappointed; those ready to stand in the presence of grotesques and indulge a long chuckle will ride merrily through an apocalypse.
January 25, 2013
I have read many books by this author and I was excited to read his first novel. It is a collection of short stories that are all inter-related. The stories are each unique and could stand alone but together they weave a sordid tale that takes many unexpected twists and turns. I was sad to have this book end and I look forward to his next novel.
May 10, 2015
Amazing. The structure is mind-bending, the sentences are joyously long and noisy, the story is smutty and slightly evil and altogether, this couldn't be more up my alley if it tried. A remarkable book and an excellent novel model.
October 6, 2016
Not for those who want a cut and dry story or who get easily confused. This book is one of the few in a very long time that made me look up words while reading!
August 2, 2023
Bleak and crude, 15 interlocking stories surrounding a Jesuit boys' school. Even that description is better than the book. Extra star for being well-written.
November 3, 2014
Did not finish. Much too raw for my taste.
December 1, 2017
Kevin P. Keating’s The Natural Order of Things is a wonderful illustration of a sex-saturated society. Adultery, fornication, masturbation, and prostitution abound in a cast of disconnected characters who all seem to live for immediate gratification of genital activity—not “sex”, since that is reserved for husbands and wives, but mere genital activity. It is as though these characters never grew up beyond Freud’s oral stage or never knew anything after Kohlberg’s first stage of moral development.
Maybe this sex-saturation can be attributed to the narrator’s bias against religious entities. Why the narrator of all “people” should especially attack Jesuit priests is never explained. Oh, well, maybe Keating just wants to show readers how ridiculous an unreliable narrator can get. After all, if the narrator him- or herself has a bias against religious beliefs, institutions, or, more importantly, persons, then his or her characters will display that same bias.
Perhaps this is why the narration is disconnected. If fictional characters rely only on their genitals for expressing the deepest of human urges, then it is no wonder that their lives are disconnected. After all, real people have sex with their spouses, go to work, pay taxes, and, if they are real Catholics (unlike the pseudo-Catholics depicted in this novel) participate in Mass every Sunday, thanking God for their lives and the wonder of His creation.
Despite the problem of these disconnected characters, the novel has its merits. The language is ornate, some sections reading like poems more than prose. Perhaps the most important thing about this novel is that it can show twenty-first century folk just how ridiculous lives focused on mere genital activity can be. The primary benefit, therefore, of reading this novel—beyond the sheer revelry in good description and hearty laughs at stupid sex scenes—is that the reader can say, “Thank God I’m not like THAT idiot!”
Maybe this sex-saturation can be attributed to the narrator’s bias against religious entities. Why the narrator of all “people” should especially attack Jesuit priests is never explained. Oh, well, maybe Keating just wants to show readers how ridiculous an unreliable narrator can get. After all, if the narrator him- or herself has a bias against religious beliefs, institutions, or, more importantly, persons, then his or her characters will display that same bias.
Perhaps this is why the narration is disconnected. If fictional characters rely only on their genitals for expressing the deepest of human urges, then it is no wonder that their lives are disconnected. After all, real people have sex with their spouses, go to work, pay taxes, and, if they are real Catholics (unlike the pseudo-Catholics depicted in this novel) participate in Mass every Sunday, thanking God for their lives and the wonder of His creation.
Despite the problem of these disconnected characters, the novel has its merits. The language is ornate, some sections reading like poems more than prose. Perhaps the most important thing about this novel is that it can show twenty-first century folk just how ridiculous lives focused on mere genital activity can be. The primary benefit, therefore, of reading this novel—beyond the sheer revelry in good description and hearty laughs at stupid sex scenes—is that the reader can say, “Thank God I’m not like THAT idiot!”
December 3, 2022
I’m not one for writing reviews and I’m on my phone where I hate typing too much so, in short, this is one of my new favorite novels. Not because it made me feel good, but because it made me feel. I shed tears. My brow contorted in some remarkable ways. As awful as the characters’ dispositions may seem they feel deeply relatable to me. Very sordid book. 5/5
April 6, 2024
I have no idea what I just read… probably the worst book I’ve read in a long time. DNF towards the very end where a male character takes a giant poop on a hotel floor. I’m not sure what the author was trying to say with this piece, but it definitely wasn’t for me.
October 27, 2019
Well written, but depressing without any point. Mostly a waste of time, except some of the sentence structures and word choices are interesting, though short of masterful.
December 29, 2019
This is the worst book I ever read. I want to give it the lowest rating possible. I only read it to the end because sometimes I have been pleasantly surprised by a book's ending. Not this time
May 25, 2018
A powerful, wealthy religious institution can be the dominant presence in a community, controlling the economy, well-being of citizens, and the outward behavior and internal thoughts of those citizens. Kevin P. Keating’s The Natural Order of Things focuses on such an institution, a Jesuit school that sounds like a mini University of Notre Dame complete with an emphasis on the football team. But Keating doesn’t fall into the arms of the institution: he turns away and embraces, for the most part, what goes on outside of those walls. In fifteen connected short stories in the style of Winesburg, Ohio, Keating introduces a number of characters who cross paths or share DNA: a football player who blows the big game, a creative writing teacher who may be sleeping with her students, an elderly priest who is neglected because he denies God, and beer delivery man who falls in love with the cardboard cutouts of the company’s pin-up girl, among others. Listing these characters off make them sound like stereotypes, but Keating’s descriptions of them were sharp and unique. We’re told the football coach’s “charms of success have abandoned him entirely--a terrible thing for a man who clings to his fading celebrity as an idolator clings to a golden monkey paw,” especially since his lady landlord with the “lizard lips” is basically raping him for rent.
The voice shifts little between one story and the next because it’s all in third person. This voice is mostly written in long, winding sentences that frequently delve into elaborate detail about one example:
The voice shifts little between one story and the next because it’s all in third person. This voice is mostly written in long, winding sentences that frequently delve into elaborate detail about one example:
Most conversation she finds tedious, especially since the small talk these days centers around which aging faculty members have been whisked away to the clinic because Death has dropped by for an unexpected visit, perhaps not with glimmering scythe and hooded robe, no, but with a sly “Boo!”, just enough to put the fear of God into them, make them sink to the floor with a minor stroke, leaving them with a noticeable slump to their shoulders, an angry downward scowl to their mouths.I wasn’t bothered by Keating’s style because I often found that the longer the sentence went on, the more “ridiculous” and entertaining it could get, a quality you might see in graphic novels like Transmetropolitan or Preacher. I was thrown at first and felt Keating was overdoing it, but I got used to it quickly and appreciated the over-the-top nature of his similes: “To George, the soaring cloud tops look like solid and muscular like figures masterfully crafted from massive sheets of steel, a three-headed hellhound, maybe, bounding toward heaven, eager to taste the tender flesh of angels’ wings.” The reaction was three-fold here: skeptical, giggling, and then appreciation for the audacity to write such a sentence.
July 14, 2016
Bosch in the Rust Belt
As I often am, I was attracted by the cover, which in small scale looked like the walls of a chapel covered in rich frescoes. Once I got the actual book in my hands, I saw that these paintings were details from the work of Hieronymus Bosch, whose visions of sin and torment—even in this case the Garden of Earthly Delights—come from some overcharged nightmare pullulating with bizarre detail.
And so it is in Keating's writing. Bad writing, I would have said at the beginning, never content with one image when two or three might be crammed in. But this is not the badness of someone with no idea how to handle words. On the contrary, Keating controls them perfectly, but uses them to sickening effect. His opening picture of the slums of a decaying rust belt city, hunted by packs of maimed feral dogs, seems like a Cormac McCarthy of the north. A Catholic one at that, adding the sickly smell of incense to the nightmare. The main surviving institution in this purgatory is a Jesuit prep school, and it's the eve of the annual Holy War, the big game against their principal rival. All depends on the star quarterback, and the Rector has ordered a night-long vigil of silence to pray for his success. But there are forces of darkness at work to drag him down, and this being Keating, the degradation will succeed.
The book has an interesting structure. It is comprised of fifteen stories, each overlapping with those before it, containing many of the same events, but from a different perspective. So we get the father of the troubled quarterback, the Jesuit team coach, the principal benefactor, his unfaithful wife, and so on, each seen with their pants down. If you think "different perspectives" involve changes in texture or the occasional let-up, think again. In short succession, we get drunkenness and vomiting, drug use, prostitution, several kinds of sex from masturbation to gang rape, robbery, and poisoning. And that is only through the fifth story, which was as far as I could stomach Mr. Keating's nightmare. I did notice, however, that the title of the final story is "Gehenna." A destination that Bosch would have understood; but at least his paintings are lovely to look at.
As I often am, I was attracted by the cover, which in small scale looked like the walls of a chapel covered in rich frescoes. Once I got the actual book in my hands, I saw that these paintings were details from the work of Hieronymus Bosch, whose visions of sin and torment—even in this case the Garden of Earthly Delights—come from some overcharged nightmare pullulating with bizarre detail.
And so it is in Keating's writing. Bad writing, I would have said at the beginning, never content with one image when two or three might be crammed in. But this is not the badness of someone with no idea how to handle words. On the contrary, Keating controls them perfectly, but uses them to sickening effect. His opening picture of the slums of a decaying rust belt city, hunted by packs of maimed feral dogs, seems like a Cormac McCarthy of the north. A Catholic one at that, adding the sickly smell of incense to the nightmare. The main surviving institution in this purgatory is a Jesuit prep school, and it's the eve of the annual Holy War, the big game against their principal rival. All depends on the star quarterback, and the Rector has ordered a night-long vigil of silence to pray for his success. But there are forces of darkness at work to drag him down, and this being Keating, the degradation will succeed.
The book has an interesting structure. It is comprised of fifteen stories, each overlapping with those before it, containing many of the same events, but from a different perspective. So we get the father of the troubled quarterback, the Jesuit team coach, the principal benefactor, his unfaithful wife, and so on, each seen with their pants down. If you think "different perspectives" involve changes in texture or the occasional let-up, think again. In short succession, we get drunkenness and vomiting, drug use, prostitution, several kinds of sex from masturbation to gang rape, robbery, and poisoning. And that is only through the fifth story, which was as far as I could stomach Mr. Keating's nightmare. I did notice, however, that the title of the final story is "Gehenna." A destination that Bosch would have understood; but at least his paintings are lovely to look at.
February 19, 2018
Second read: It is a bleak, bleak world that Keating presents, a postmodern picture of a crumbling urban dystopia.
There is no right and wrong: only shades of gray like the city itself, a wasteland of demolition, neglect, and packs of snarling dogs. This is a city (a world) with no god. With no good. With no love.
These characters are doomed, stumbling through the maze of a pointless life like lab rats. It's a small reward they seek: the temporary forgetting of purchased sex and cheap alcohol. Regardless of age or social status, these things are all the characters know to want, to hope for (if hope exist at all in this world).
I had forgotten just how dark are these stories. "Totally depressing" wouldn't be an understatement. And yet there's something so compelling about Keating's world: depicting flagrantly man's fallen nature.
To wrestle with.
First read: Deliciously dark. A book to read on an all-gray day, heavy with clouds, or during a vicious, crackling thunderstorm. Keating's story, set in a world in which love and joy and morality are all stunningly absent, is somehow a pleasure to read, like the perverse comfort of temporarily wallowing in misery. Optimism is shunned here, nonexistent: an unexpected delight in a world of happy endings.
Despite his raw, evil subject matter, Keating writes beautifully, creating another lovely contrast. His prose contains, in fact, the only beauty in the story. His metaphors are refreshingly original, every image relevant in that it reinforces the tone while also providing characterization. For example, near the beginning, high school football is described as a religion, cultish; fans buying pennants and jerseys not out of cheerful sportsmanship but to atone for their lack of athleticism. The big game is a "Holy War." Nothing garners a comparison to something pleasant; rather everything is rotting, shriveled, wasted...or at best, neutral.
Disturbing. Unforgettable.
There is no right and wrong: only shades of gray like the city itself, a wasteland of demolition, neglect, and packs of snarling dogs. This is a city (a world) with no god. With no good. With no love.
These characters are doomed, stumbling through the maze of a pointless life like lab rats. It's a small reward they seek: the temporary forgetting of purchased sex and cheap alcohol. Regardless of age or social status, these things are all the characters know to want, to hope for (if hope exist at all in this world).
I had forgotten just how dark are these stories. "Totally depressing" wouldn't be an understatement. And yet there's something so compelling about Keating's world: depicting flagrantly man's fallen nature.
To wrestle with.
First read: Deliciously dark. A book to read on an all-gray day, heavy with clouds, or during a vicious, crackling thunderstorm. Keating's story, set in a world in which love and joy and morality are all stunningly absent, is somehow a pleasure to read, like the perverse comfort of temporarily wallowing in misery. Optimism is shunned here, nonexistent: an unexpected delight in a world of happy endings.
Despite his raw, evil subject matter, Keating writes beautifully, creating another lovely contrast. His prose contains, in fact, the only beauty in the story. His metaphors are refreshingly original, every image relevant in that it reinforces the tone while also providing characterization. For example, near the beginning, high school football is described as a religion, cultish; fans buying pennants and jerseys not out of cheerful sportsmanship but to atone for their lack of athleticism. The big game is a "Holy War." Nothing garners a comparison to something pleasant; rather everything is rotting, shriveled, wasted...or at best, neutral.
Disturbing. Unforgettable.
May 1, 2014
I found Kevin P. Keating's "The Natural Order of Things" interesting, disturbing, and thought-provoking. The book is a series of interconnected stories that tell the experiences of a few different people who work at, go to school at, or are somehow connected to a Jesuit school in a dying Midwestern city. The stories focus on the grittiness of life, the disturbing and unsettling.
Still Keating tells the stories with a richness that makes them fascinating and keeps the reader turning the page. With a warning to steel oneselves for the shock and awe factor contained, I would recommend this set of stories to any mature reader.
Still Keating tells the stories with a richness that makes them fascinating and keeps the reader turning the page. With a warning to steel oneselves for the shock and awe factor contained, I would recommend this set of stories to any mature reader.
October 27, 2019
A precisely hewed book of interlocking stories centered on a Jesuit high school in a gothically decayed Midwestern city. This novel about personal declines and overall American decline is full of depravity and dissipation, and it is sustained by visceral descriptions of sex, violence, poverty, deception, gluttony, and death. The resulting work is riveting, occasionally funny, repulsively unsettling, and well...familiar. All the characters are some combination of pathetic and alienated and doomed. Despite moments of overreach in the prose, I agree completely with the cover blurb that calls it "a dark and utterly compelling work with an unnervingly resonant vision of our present age."
May 12, 2017
Dark and haunting view of man's inhumanity to man and self. Told in a non-linear series of vignettes that offer differing perspectives of events that present the reader with multi-dimensional portraits of these oh so fallible beings.
September 22, 2014
I should have realized by the back cover that these are stories of related characters associated with a Midwest Jesuit school, and not a novel. I would have preferred more closure with some stories.
But wonderful "gorgeous" prose.
But wonderful "gorgeous" prose.
June 8, 2014
Decent prose, fairly depraved story.
July 7, 2014
excellent work. raw, dark, sexual and frank. not unlike a Stephen King in that regard. Keating's use of the metaphor is unparalleled. a quick read.
January 10, 2014
incredible descriptions of characters and storylines-easy to picture
Displaying 1 - 22 of 22 reviews