The Short Day Dying by Peter Hobbs

The Short Day Dying

Peter Hobbs

Is there a God? This questions burns through the mind of Charles Wenmouth, a Methodist lay preacher. Throughout the novel, I feel he is constantly in conflict with his faith. He admonishes those who do not observe the Sabbath, yet he wonders why he works so hard to make others believe just what he himself is struggling to believe in. For me the crux comes when he loses, through death, someone very close to his heart. In this day and age, we'd call it depression, as the signs are so obvious. This book is not an easy read, in that it lacks some punctuation. However, it is strange how easily one adapts to its format.

Extract
Then the week were past full of horror and so soon gone.

And at every moment of it at every second of every long hour I have known an unspeakable pressure writhing in me. There are questions I have needed an answer to they have burned in every part of my body and I have never felt such disquiet. How did it end for her? Were it a panicked death full of desperation and misery for the family? These questions have caused my whole frame to tense but the frustration could not squeeze from me. I needed to have been there, I have needed to know did she feel her Master with her or go crying and afraid?

Parallels
  • Devout Sceptics by Bel Mooney
  • John Wesley : The Evangelical Revival and the Rise of Methodism in England by John Munsey Turner
  • A Small Pebble in a Big Pond by Arlene Brown