Godless

June 28, 2004
"Why mess around with Catholicism when you can have your own customized religion? All you need is a disciple or two. And a god." So says narrator Jason Bock, a high schooler rebelling against the church "outreach" program his father insists he attend. On the spur of the moment, he starts his own church, the Chutengodians, who worship the "Ten-legged God" their town's water tower. It begins as a joke, with Jason and his friends creating rules that he thinks are as arbitrary as the rules of the Catholic Church (they observe Sabbath on Tuesday, the first commandment is "thou shalt not be a jerk"), but Jason's "followers" begin taking the new religion seriously. Many teens will likely recognize or identify with Hautman's (Sweetblood
; Mr. Was
) religious critiques; others may be offended (discussing Holy Communion, Jason describes the host as "a sliver of Jesus meat. But they make the host as different from meat as they can, so that even though communion is a form of cannibalism, nobody gets grossed out"). However, while Hautman pushes his satirical story line to the limit, he doesn't bring to it the depth or subtlety of his previous works (for example, Jason's dare to others to disprove that the water tower is God doesn't elicit the obvious response that the tower is man-made). The result is a provocative plot, but not an entirely challenging novel. Ages 12-up.

August 1, 2004
Gr 7 Up-Jason is a smart 15-year-old, an agnostic-leaning-toward-atheism, who resists following in the footsteps of his devoutly Catholic father. Getting clocked under the water tower by the nasty and unpredictable Henry leads Jason and his friend Shin to combine their talents to posit a new religion. "Chutengodianism" sanctifies water, the source of all life, as manifested by the Ten-Legged God, aka that same million-gallon water tower. Creating the creed on the fly, Jason soon gathers a handful of acolytes, including his former nemesis. Their midnight pilgrimage to the top of the tower for worship transmutes into an impromptu baptism when Henry hacksaws through the padlock. Their swim rouses sexy thoughts about Magda, stripped to her panties and bra, balanced soon after by panic when it seems they might be trapped. Regaining the top of the tank, Henry slips and sustains severe injuries crashing onto a catwalk below. Fortunately for him, the authorities have already arrived. The Church is busted and the faithful face new trials and temptations. These are fun, wacky, interesting characters. While chuckling aloud may be common in the early chapters, serious issues dominate the latter stages of the book. The rivalry between Jason and Henry for the attentions of Magda, Jason's unrepentant certainty that doing what he sees as right is more important than following his parents' rules, and Shin's apparent continued belief in the tenets he helped create are thought-provoking and disturbing. Jason is left to ponder the meaning of a religion that has only himself as a member.-Joel Shoemaker, Southeast Junior High School, Iowa City, IA

Copyright 2004 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

Starred review from June 1, 2004
Gr. 7-10. Hautman knows how to project a voice. In " Sweetblood," (2003), the voice was that of a diabetic who felt a kinship with vampires. Here, the voice belongs to a disaffected 16-year-old, Jason Block, who decides to invent a new religion with a new god--the town's water tower. Finding converts is surprisingly easy. His small group includes his twitchy friend Shin, a self-styled scribe who is writing the new testament (snippets enticingly appear at the beginning of each chapter), and Henry, a bully who undergoes changes when he is named high priest of the "Chutengodians." In a smartly structured narrative that is by turns funny, worried, and questioning, Jason watches as his once-cohesive little congregation starts wanting to "worship" in its own ways, some of them deadly. Not everything works here. Shin's meltdown doesn't seem real, even though it has been thoroughly foreshadowed. But most scenes are honest and true to the bone, such as the one in which Jason and Harry agree that their dangerous stunts are worth their weight in memories. Anyone who has questioned his or her religion, especially as a teenager, will respond to Jason's struggles with belief. Many individuals, upon reading this, will consider their own questions once more.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2004, American Library Association.)