Wet Engine: Exploring the Mad Wild Miracle of the Heart

by Brian Doyle

Paperback, 2012

Call number

241 DOY

Collection

Publication

Oregon State University Press (2012), Edition: New edition, originally pubished by Paraclete Press in 2005, 128 pages

Description

This startling, genuinely unique book moves like a freight train through the scientific, emotional, literary, philosophical, and spiritual understandings of the heart, from cardiology to courage, from love letters and pop songs to Jesus. The torment of Doyle's own infant son's heart surgery is the thread weaving the strands together, but the wisdom is for every person who seeks a more passionate life, in touch with the heart of God.

User reviews

LibraryThing member satyridae
I love Brian Doyle more with every book of his I read. This book's genesis was his own baby son's malformed heart and subsequent heart surgeries, which gives even more vulnerability than usual to the writing. And with Doyle, that's saying a lot, because he writes with his skin off normally.

I love
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his style, which is not quite stream of consciousness but certainly packs more words per sentence than the average. None of the words are superfluous or gratuitous and the sentences tend to pile emotion upon emotion till one is gasping and a little more filled with wonder than one was prior to traversing the long slope of Doyle's words.

His writing is informed by his spirituality and his deep connection with his Catholic faith. Interestingly, though I'm a dyed-in-the-wool unbeliever, this sincere and glowing religion serves to make me love Doyle all the more- again because he's so purely present, so achingly open and so triumphantly, blessedly human.

4.5 stars.
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ISBN

0870716530 / 9780870716539
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