Truly Like Lightning - Blog Posts
Story #73 is a CPE review of the same book "Truly Like Lightning" by David Duchovny.
Prompt: A literary magazine has invited readers to submit reviews of modern books that might deserve the status of a classic. You decide to submit a review. Your review should briefly describe the book, explain why you think it deserves the status, and speculate on what makes a book a classic.
David Duchovny, known mainly as an actor, once again scales the heights of the literary world with his novel “Truly like lightning”. It, indeed, is truly like lightning accompanied by one clap of thunder after another – blinding and deafening in its narrative.
Duchovny’s novel tells the story of Bronson Powers, a former Hollywood stuntman and a converted Mormon, who lives off the grid in a plural marriage with three wives and ten children. Seemingly happy in their private desert outside of Joshua Tree, away from the corruption of the modern world, they spend their days hunting, foraging, and farming. Everything changes, when Maya Abbadessa, an ambitious employee of a predatory investment firm literally stumbles upon Powers’ homestead, setting into motion a deadly chain of events that will test the beliefs of everyone involved.
Throughout the narrative, the reader is confronted with the question of how to tell right from wrong in the world of extremes. There is a constant battle of virtue and vice – money against love, sex against religion, greed against generosity. Transposed through the account of Bronson Powers, both a martyr and a crucifier, this is a story of parents who mean well and children who obey their orders blindly. As if to aggravate the situation and show the inevitability of the tragedy, in the background, the reader witnesses how the environment of the ancient desert of Joshua Tree vanishes, turning yet into another meaningless hotel slash entertaining center.
“Truly like lightning” might seem hackneyed for anyone living dangerously close to Hollywood, but unhackneyed for anyone from afar. Regardless of sounding trite in his commentary on pop culture, the multilayered themes Duchovny explores and masterfully exploits are as universal as they will ever be. After all, what deems a book classic if not the topics that undoubtedly resonate with readers at all times - past, present, and future?
Story #72, which is a 'Truly like lightning' review.
“The X-files” were my Bible throughout the 90s to 2000s. I fell in love with the character of Fox Mulder long before I fell in love for the first time for real. I didn’t think Duchovny could get any better than that until he started writing and I started reading what he had written.
“Truly Like Lightning” is not David Duchovny’s first book, but it’s his best so far - it will strike you to the very core and leave you aching, with questions whirling like a snowstorm in the head.
Set in the desert of Joshua Tree, the story centers around the former Hollywood stuntman Bronson Powers, now a converted Mormon living unplugged in a polygamous marriage. They raise their ten kids away from the evils of society until one day a young ambitious employee of a corrupt real estate company targets their land. Cultures clash. Faith is tested. Choices are made.
The book will hook you and won’t let you put it down… if you manage to push through the first fifty pages. Seriously, it took me two weeks to read that part, where Duchovny mostly explained the background of his characters, and only two days to finish the 445-page manuscript, when the story finally turned into an action movie-like narrative.
All things considered, it’s worth every minute of reading. What made a successful man abandon all the perks of Hollywood and choose to live the life of an isolated nomad? What happens to Powers’ family once they are forced off their land and into the temptations of the world they left behind? What’s with the children who have never had a say in any of that?
Read the book. And be prepared to be struck.