God comes to Earth in the fragile form of an emaciated Dinka woman wandering the wasted African wilderness hoping to help out at a Sudanese refugee camp. After the American diplomats put in the necessary photo-ops and take off in a blur of helicopter rotors, the Sudanese government moves in and massacres every living thing in the camp, God included.
Ron Currie Jr.'s provocative novel God is Dead makes quick work of establishing the title incident, and spends the rest of its brief length detailing what happens in the world after the word of God's death becomes widely known.
Told in a series of vignettes, the novel takes the form of short stories that share a common theme. The effect is a series of vividly rendered strokes from Currie's authorial paintbrush that render a picture of haunting beauty.
Things begin gently enough, with characters musing how much the world after God's death resembles the world before. As the novel progresses, though, things begin slowly to unravel. By the final chapters, although Currie never loses sight of the moments of human tenderness, things have pitched themselves over into the realm of horror. The horror of a gentle apocalypse that slides in slowly like a knife between the ribs of mankind.
Currie's voice is well-defined in this, his first novel. At turns sad, funny, and scary, God is Dead is vibrantly, sparingly written. A bold, brief book that isn't afraid to ask questions and posit nightmare scenarios, Currie's novel shines a light in brief flashes onto the darkest sides of human nature while managing to strike a series of universal chords.
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