I Am God

December 1, 2018
In Italian author Sartori's English-language debut, a jaded God fixates on a female geneticist down on Earth while commenting in diary form on the sad state of humanity."The reason human beings are in such a bad way is because they think," the self-described "Big Poobah" declares in his opening salvo. Why is thinking bad? Because it is "by definition sketchy and imperfect--and misleading." For God, who himself deals in paradoxes and circular reasoning, the Bible is an "unreliable and delusional" fiction. But for all his superiority and ability for "perfecting perfection," the Almighty can't avoid mortal feelings. What will he do with his growing infatuation with the geneticist Daphne, to whom he is attracted despite the fact that she's a militant atheist who burns crucifixes and hacks the Vatican's website? Like the angel in the Wim Wenders film Wings of Desire, God finds himself considering what it would be like if he experienced life as a human. While Sartori surfs breezily enough on a tide of deep thoughts, the book lacks the sharpness or real sense of risk that would make it resonate. Sartori might also want to reconsider having God say things like, "I have nothing against homosexuals, but if I created men and women, it was for some purpose, if you know what I mean."Sartori's philosophical fantasy succeeds in getting us to ponder life's big questions from fresh angles but is short on fresh insight.

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March 1, 2019

So here's God, hanging out in the universe and falling for a tall, skinny geneticist on Earth who's insemintating cows and couldn't care less about Him. He even professes innocence when the scientist who's also fallen for the geneticist keeps having accidents. Meanwhile, He reflects on faith, science, capitalism, and His presumed greatest creation, humans, whose worst imperfection is the couple: "I personally have never seen a pair of penguins shouting vile accusations at each other about mothers-in-law or nail scissors." He also considers pushing up the explosion of Andromeda by two billion years. VERDICT What a great character study, told in a voice that's both sardonic and captivating. For all readers except the most devout.

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2019
"I myself am astonished at what's happening to me," God?yes, that God?confesses. "I'm the same . . . . I remain infallible, omniscient, omnipotent, omniwhatever. And yet, and yet . . . ." Somehow, God's fallen in love with "this damn Daphne"; she's "a tall girl with purple pigtails who at every opportunity is shoving her arms up a cow's ass," albeit with purpose, as she's a geneticist with a side gig in artificial bovine insemination. She's also "an incorrigible misbeliever who's in favor of gay marriage and abortion on demand . . . and all she cares about is her own sexual satisfaction." As a "militant atheist," she just might have a virtual target on the Vatican. Plagued by "foolishness," God's taken to journaling, making his ruinous obsession an open book?in fact, this open book. Italian novelist, poet, dramatist, and scientist Sartori ruthlessly confronts the Catholic Church, hypermasculinity, environmental manipulation, capitalism, feel-good entitlement, and more, all in the name of God (whose perfection proves anything but). PEN/Heim Translation Fund-awarded Randall ensures that Sartori's English-language debut conveys the full impact of Sartori's scathing humor.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)