Compelling, beautifully-written exploration of small-town Canada, religion, and the experience of growing up different. I feel like I was kind of biased by the books I read immediately before, so I was hoping for a bit more of an exploration of sexuality (specifically, being gay in small, religious communities). Having said that, this is still a phenomenal book, and I'm excited to read more of Gail Anderson-Dargatz's books. ( )

Small village life in rural Canada.

I very, very nearly gave up on this book on the grounds that there was too much bible bashing - I attended my book group having read only 35% and they persuaded me to keep going, claiming that the ending put it all into context. I did finish, which is always satisfying, but it was only a three-star read for me.

I had expected more from the synaesthesia aspect of the novel - Job's ability to experience sound as something he could hold and/or see. He listened to the vacuum cleaner for hours on end because it produced an 'invisible egg with the smooth, cool feel of glass'. However, I didn't find these descriptions enlightening; in order to get anything out of them I had to stop reading and ponder the details and this curtailed the flow of my reading.

The author's strengths lay in her character descriptions - Job's dreadful brother and his brother's wife were truly cringeworthy, and Job's friend Will, really pulled on my heartstrings when he was punished later in the book. I also felt for Job when he had to move into the hired-hand's shed to allow room for his brother and family, giving up his beloved kitchen and the solace of cooking.

I was involved by the characters but not by the story, which pretty much left me cold.
I also found I had to remind myself that we were in Canada, as the village had the feel of Southern, 'Redneck' America.
Not the author's best work I am told, so I might give her another chance, we shall see. ( )

http://tamaranth.blogspot.com/2007/09/49-rhinestone-button-gail-anderson.html ( )

Amazon.ca
Gail Anderson-Dargatz's third novel recasts the Biblical story of Job in Alberta farm country. Fans of her earlier fiction will relish the familiar mix of ingredients in A Rhinestone Button: the isolated rural upbringing of its main character, the wealth of farming lore, and the lush descriptions of the natural world. Like Beth Weeks (the hero of Anderson-Dargatz's award-winning novel The Cure for Death by Lightning), Job Sunstrum experiences a deep psychic connection to his landscape. The shy young cattle farmer is blessed with the gift of synesthesia: he can see and even feel sound. For Job, the whirling hum of a vacuum cleaner is "an invisible egg with the smooth, cool feel of glass." Too "pretty" to be fully accepted by the ordinary folk of Godsfinger, Job appears content to linger on the fringes of his community, farming the land his abusive father left him, baking his famous almond squares, and communing with the vacuum.
The collapse of Job's tidy world is presaged by the unexpected return home of his brother Jacob, an out-of-work pastor with a sour wife and a troubled son. Suddenly, he's not only banished from his beloved kitchen but struggling to figure out his relationship with everyone from his childhood playmate Will to the attractive waitress at the local café. What Job needs (as even the local nutcase keeps telling him) is a woman. What the sexually confused virgin finds instead is born-again religion in the form of Jacob's charismatic preacher friend, Jack Divine.

Anderson-Dargatz's account of Job's initiation into Pentecostalism is as fascinating as it is funny. Scenes such as Job's inane attempt to speak in tongues and Father Divine's outing of a young gay man have a quirky honesty that make for compelling reading. The novel as a whole, however, suffers from choppy narrative transitions and a certain vacuousness that seems to be an extension of Job's limitations as a character. Angelic though he is, Job is just a little too dim to really care about. --Lisa Alward ( )