Girl Meets God: On the Path to a Spiritual Life [Hardcover]

Winner's youth and charm go a long way in making this an enjoyable book to read, though those aspects alone cannot cover all of the book's shortcomings. Winner has not been a Christian for very long, though in a way this works in her favor because memories and insights from her Jewish past greatly enrich her more conventional Christian reflections. The interesection and tension between her Jewishness and Christianity is by far the most interesting aspect of the book, which makes the portions about her love life and her tattoos less interesting by comparison. Previous reviewers have called the book self-indulgent, which is not an entirely unfair charge--but it's offset by the Jewish/Christian insights. The book has also been compared to Anne Lamott's Traveling Mercies, and they are similar in that they are highly personal narratives about cultured/educated women coming to faith, but there the similarity ends. Lamott and Winner are of different generations, and are different kinds of writers. In my judgment, Lamott does better: her novelistic skills, wacky humor, and above all her varied life experiences give her writing greater weight than Winner's, who sometimes seems to hold back when she should follow a thought all the way (for instance, when she reflects on whether there is anti-Semitic content in the Gospels). Winner has almost always been religious, and in conservative religions too; despite her apparent sexual freedom and drinking of Scotch and wearing of fishnet stockings, it sometimes sounds like she has a lot more to experience in life at this stage than to write a memoir about it. Overall, I'd take the Jewish/Christian hybrid reflections and leave behind the rest, but in any case, this is a writer to watch out for in future years. A clearly intelligent and interesting figure as Lauren Winner will undoubtedly do something great in later years.

Her discomfort with the two labels of "Christian" and "liberal" shines through, as does her evident pain of the exile she now feels from her Orthodox community. I really wanted to hear more about why she became a Christian, what drew her to Christianity, why she felt the need to leave Judaism - was she feeling these doubts all along? If so, why not engage them *before* converting to Judaism? Part of me wonders if any faith community will ever be enough for Ms. Winner, especially since the ending was somewhat open. I think she has some interesting ideas and thoughts, but wished she'd waited to write this book until she'd matured a little more.

As an Anne Lamott-, Madeleine L'Engle-, Nora Gallagher- reading liberal Christian type, I was interested in all the buzz about "Girl Meets God." Most reviews describe Winner as an intellectual evangelical who can write a memoir with the best of them. And this is true. Winner is quite smart, and she articulates her spiritual path (first to Orthodox Judaism, then to evangelical Anglicanism) with literary panache. One especially enjoyable aspect of the book is its vivid language and imagery. The book (as of yet) is lush with the smells, sights, tastes, and sounds of the two faiths at hand. These sensory details are what make the divine palpable in religious life-- particularly a religious life rooted in incarnation-- and Winner's celebration of this truth is made beautifully apparent as her story unfolds.
However (and this however accounts for the missing fifth star), Winner loses me through her negative references to liberal Christians. She makes her disdain for liberal Christians a little too clear, referring to the lot as "wishy washy." I am tired of the incorrect assumption that liberal Christians are less faithful than evangelical Christians, and I had hoped that Winner wouldn't fall into this false notion. The book, at places, is shadowed by Winner's unfounded judgement of liberal-leaning Christians. I must admit that this only adds a layer to my own judgements regarding evangelical Christians (always telling the rest of us that we just aren't Christian enough).
Overall, from this halfway point, I am glad that I purchased the book, and more than a little convinced that Winner and I would probably get along swimmingly once we got over the liberal/conservative rift. As an emotionally responsive reader, one of the aspects I most enjoy about the memoir genre is simply hearing another person's story. I've adopted Anne Lamott as my pretend aunt, and I hereby adopt Lauren Winner as my pretend friend.
I reccommend.