aza’s Reviews > An Ocean Full of Angels: The Autobiography of 'Isa Ben Adam > Status Update

Did his line editor quit halfway through the book? Because wow, I’ve never seen a published novel with so many typos and errors…

“Mara noticed it, smiled, and said to me, ‘You’re still a little kid.’ Then, seeing my embarrassment, added, ‘No, I mean it as a compliment, not an insult. You’re still alive. Most people die when they grow up.’”

30 pages of him entirely objectifying women and “traditional” femininity (breasts, skirts, bare feet, “child-like,” lack of makeup, a hidden pain that only a husband can take away) I feel sick

“I would sooner believe that Libby is an archangel than believe there are other gods, so why does it feel more right to me to ascribe a hurricane to a nonexistent god than to a real low pressure system? And why does the something in me that feels that way not feel like foolishness?”

“‘I mean I died inside. I was totally helpless. I didn’t control my body anymore and my body didn’t control my world anymore.’
She said, ‘That must have been a horrible experience for you.’
He replied, ‘It was the most precious experience of my life. I tasted death, and I tasted the sweet tang of life, and now I can see.’”

“Libby once said of Eva, ‘She’s a little piece of God. She’s broken off of God and fallen to earth. That’s why she’s broken.’ Literally, of course, that’s pantheism, and idolatry. But poetically, it’s profound.”

“I began to walk toward the edge of the fifty-foot-high rocky cliff. I felt no hurry and no hesitation. I felt no hope and no fear. There was Nothing within and Nothing without. The sea below seemed to beckon. I had no more will. I was following another will, a will without pity and without pain. I had no fear of death. I had already died. I was impervious.”

“Mama had crossed the sea of light and I was left alone in the dark. She had gone up in a chariot of fire and I was left in the water. My attempts at prayers fell like birds without wings. I had been preparing for this moment for months, yet nothing could possibly have prepared me for this moment. It was too big.”

“If the Almighty should solicit my advice for designing an afterlife for animals, I would suggest that a heaven for dogs and a hell for rabbits can be combined very economically.”