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A Sense of Order
The author asks a big question: Who is responsible? One person in need of this information is Lon, who wonders why his marriage is falling apart. Lon thought his wife would re-initiate intimacy at some point. She doesn t, and he sets out to find the man he thinks stands between them but only finds an apparition and he still can t fix his marriage. In another story, the LDS prophet is drawn to s simpler time when he could wander out unnoticed and buy a candy bar. Church Security won t let him outside on his own and Public Relations won t let him wear anything but a suit and tie. Still, the impulse to be a regular guy for an afternoon is compelling. Can t he make his own decisions? He can, but what are the consequences? And then there s Jerry, who passes three men in suits who are talking and laughing at the loading dock behind an LDS temple. One of them looks up, drops a cigarette and crushes it, then slips into a nearby car. Another man someone who has made Jerry s life miserable taunts him, saying: Jerry, your goodness is your enemy ... and tell all your friends. Who is responsible? Maybe it s the author s reverie that s to blame, but his stories have a way of getting deep inside the psyche and haunting us.
236 pages, Hardcover
First published July 15, 2010
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Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews
December 3, 2010
One of the best short story collections I've read in a while (and that's saying something, since I spent a good part of 2009 reading short story collections), Harrell's book is smart, moving, and altogether new. Harrell tells Mormon stories in a way unlike any other Mormon writer I know. His work is unapologetically faithful--spiritual, even, taking for granted the fact that God's children will regularly experience the otherworldly and the divine--but his work is also boldly, fearlessly willing to take a reader's expectation for what a "spiritual" Mormon story should be and turn that expectation on its head. A Sense of Order and Other Stories is an incredibly important addition to the canon of Mormon literature, and anybody interested in this genre must read it.
August 7, 2012
These short stories confront the ideas of faith and spirituality, and challenge the mind to define them. Jack Harrell has been my professor on two different occasions, and this man continues to amaze me. He is delightful and hilarious in class, and he is so "down to earth" I can almost see the dirt smudged across his cheeks. This man is a brilliant teacher, and an equally brilliant writer. This book is well worth the read, especially for members of the LDS faith.
October 10, 2023
I picked up a copy of this collection at the gift shop of the Kirtland Temple. It made me happy to see that some Mormon lit found its way there amidst all the Mormon historical and doctrinal selections. I figured it was my duty to purchase it to encourage the future stocking of literary titles. I was only familiar with Jack Harrell through his most well-known short story "Calling and Election," which I read in my undergraduate Mormon lit class as well as when it was reprinted in the horror issue of Irreantum along with my own LDS horror story. So I anticipated an opportunity to learn more about the breadth of Harrell's work.
For me, the overall theme in this collection is death and the Fall. My favorite of these stories was "The Lone and Dreary World," which puts a unique spin on the well-worn ground of Latter-day Saint retellings of the Adam and Eve story. This story begins after the expulsion of the garden with the unique twist of Satan tempting Adam to take his own life in order to return to God and Eve making the case for the importance of mortality and trial. Through Adam's struggle, Harrell wrestles with the difficulty of living in a world of evil and the hopelessness that comes from crippling perfectionism.
Adam and Eve return as symbols in "October Soil," in which a bishop asks the protagonist to serve as a mentor for a young man in the ward whose parents have just gone through a divorce. I laughed out loud at his attempt to convey the bishop's concerns to the young man: "I was told you write poetry. This is apparently a serious problem." The young man's poetry problem turns out to be about death, leading our protagonist back to the question of the fall and the necessity for evil and death in mortality. The story ultimately ends on a hopeful note, with Adam and Eve cleaving unto each other to provide shelter and comfort from an uncaring cosmos.
Other stories like "The Actuary," "A Sense of Order," and "Do Not Mix with Bleach" focus on portraying the bleak reality of death. Even in stories that don't directly deal with death, there's a focus on endings and things running down. "Jerome and the End of the Universe" tells of the titular Jerome's ambitious project to create a scale model of the universe inside an abandoned grocery store. The project brings together all sorts of interesting characters, but when it is complete, there's a sudden lack of purpose that feels like the uncertainty of meaning at the end of a life. There's a sense to the collection of struggling with the absolute meaning of mortality, with its brevity and finitude in contrast to the expansive infinity of the human soul.
Some stories in the collection are more intertwined with Latter-day Saint culture and theology than others. "Grandma Ruckman's Dreams," for example, while dealing with religious subject matter, seems to be set against a more in traditional Christian backdrop. However, two stories stand out in their engagement with Mormon folklore. The first is the more well-know "Calling and Election" which deals with LDS beliefs surrounding the second anointing. I will avoid saying more because it's best to go into the story with as few expectations as possible, but know that the ending is disquieting to say the least. The second story, "A Prophet's Story," features a general authority main character who is in many ways the opposite of Steven Peck's depiction of Elder Holmberg in Heike's Void, in that he pushes against the formality and isolation of his office. I found myself cheering on his exploits and the eventual ending is unusual to say the least.
This collection of stories, while dealing with some pretty bleak subject matter at times, eventually expresses confidence in the ability of human foibles and kindness to overcome an oppressively dying world. Harrell has the ability to turn a phrase or paint a picture that sticks with you as a reader that makes the experience of reading them worth your time.
For me, the overall theme in this collection is death and the Fall. My favorite of these stories was "The Lone and Dreary World," which puts a unique spin on the well-worn ground of Latter-day Saint retellings of the Adam and Eve story. This story begins after the expulsion of the garden with the unique twist of Satan tempting Adam to take his own life in order to return to God and Eve making the case for the importance of mortality and trial. Through Adam's struggle, Harrell wrestles with the difficulty of living in a world of evil and the hopelessness that comes from crippling perfectionism.
Adam and Eve return as symbols in "October Soil," in which a bishop asks the protagonist to serve as a mentor for a young man in the ward whose parents have just gone through a divorce. I laughed out loud at his attempt to convey the bishop's concerns to the young man: "I was told you write poetry. This is apparently a serious problem." The young man's poetry problem turns out to be about death, leading our protagonist back to the question of the fall and the necessity for evil and death in mortality. The story ultimately ends on a hopeful note, with Adam and Eve cleaving unto each other to provide shelter and comfort from an uncaring cosmos.
Other stories like "The Actuary," "A Sense of Order," and "Do Not Mix with Bleach" focus on portraying the bleak reality of death. Even in stories that don't directly deal with death, there's a focus on endings and things running down. "Jerome and the End of the Universe" tells of the titular Jerome's ambitious project to create a scale model of the universe inside an abandoned grocery store. The project brings together all sorts of interesting characters, but when it is complete, there's a sudden lack of purpose that feels like the uncertainty of meaning at the end of a life. There's a sense to the collection of struggling with the absolute meaning of mortality, with its brevity and finitude in contrast to the expansive infinity of the human soul.
Some stories in the collection are more intertwined with Latter-day Saint culture and theology than others. "Grandma Ruckman's Dreams," for example, while dealing with religious subject matter, seems to be set against a more in traditional Christian backdrop. However, two stories stand out in their engagement with Mormon folklore. The first is the more well-know "Calling and Election" which deals with LDS beliefs surrounding the second anointing. I will avoid saying more because it's best to go into the story with as few expectations as possible, but know that the ending is disquieting to say the least. The second story, "A Prophet's Story," features a general authority main character who is in many ways the opposite of Steven Peck's depiction of Elder Holmberg in Heike's Void, in that he pushes against the formality and isolation of his office. I found myself cheering on his exploits and the eventual ending is unusual to say the least.
This collection of stories, while dealing with some pretty bleak subject matter at times, eventually expresses confidence in the ability of human foibles and kindness to overcome an oppressively dying world. Harrell has the ability to turn a phrase or paint a picture that sticks with you as a reader that makes the experience of reading them worth your time.
December 20, 2013
It's tough to review a collection because some stories would receive 5's and others would receive 2s. There are certainly some 5-star stories here, but for me personally, there were enough 2's and three's to bring the average down to a 3. I confess that a few of the 5-star stories have stuck with me over the past few months since reading them, which is a mark of a good story for me. Gives me something to think about. A different way of looking at the world. Harrell is a Mormon author, but not all of the stories include distinctly Mormon elements. A few of the ones that do tilt too far in didactic directions for my taste, although usually in a way that complicates rather than reinforces typical Latter-day Saint perspectives. The element I appreciated most about Harrell’s writing is his ability to distill haunting ruminations into one-liners that echo in my mind long after I put the book back on the shelf. Simple things, like this: “Dear God, blind me to the pain of others.” Think on that.
April 15, 2017
This book brought up a lot of thought-provoking stories about death, life after death, and our purpose in this life. Bro. Harrell has been my professor for almost 3 years now, and I respect and admire his work greatly. However, there were a few stories I preferred more than most. And although I may not have agreed with the outcome of some of the stories, I still can appreciate his work and the time and deep thought he put into all of his stories. Aside from my opinion of the stories, they provided some great ideas for my own writing and strong philosophical subjects for me to ponder on. Thank you Bro. Harrell.
March 27, 2013
I'm a big fan of the fiction of Levi Peterson and Douglas Thayer which is informed by the American West, Utah and Mormonism. I can now add Jack Harrell, a professor of literature at BYU-Idaho in Rexburg, to my list of favorites. The short stories in this book introduced me to a wide variety of characters and made me genuinely interested in their lives. I highly recommend this short story collection. Now that I have finished it, I intend to read Harrell's award-winning novel, _Vernal Promises_, which came out in 2003.
April 14, 2011
This collection of short stories--some "Mormon" and some not--was written by a friend/colleague of my husband's. I heard Jack do a reading of one of the stories, "The Lone and Dreary World," a few years back, and I absolutely loved it. I would pick this story as my favorite, but I liked almost all of the others in the collection as well. Like a good book of short stories will do, this one created an artistic, cohesive whole that I really enjoyed.
February 1, 2016
This is one of the best books I've read this year, and one of the best collections of short stories I have read in a while. Several of the stories were ones that I remembered reading in the past and have been pondering ever since (one of them was also a not-so-favorite of mine, but I liked it a bit more after re-reading it this time). Harrell asks interesting questions about the world, and the answers aren't always what you would expect.
May 20, 2011
Very good short story collection. Heard about it from mormon literary circles, and was not disappointed. Stories vary widely in length, and I enjoyed some more than others, but Harrell's writing is clear and evocative throughout the collection. The book asks questions about God and what spirituality and divinity look like in real life.
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October 19, 2010Found on LDS Fiction blog: http://ldsfiction.blogspot.com/2010/0...
February 9, 2012
i really enjoyed these short a
stories. some are a bit morbid, but overall great :) i think everyone should read it at least once!
stories. some are a bit morbid, but overall great :) i think everyone should read it at least once!
October 22, 2012
A study of characters suspended between paralysis & dynamic individualism. Thoughtful and well-presented.
Displaying 1 - 12 of 12 reviews