Six different stories, six different notes in the human song of longing for the unattainable.

It’s crystal clear to Krasnostein how these six stories of the human experience fit together in quilted glory. It is not clear to me. While interesting, there is no threading that unites these stories of an abuse victim turned murderer, ghost hunters, UFOlogists, new earth geologists, a death doula and her clients, and conservative Mennonites. Just when I thought I had the thread pinned down, I lost it. The scattered interweaving of the six stories did little to help me get my bearings. Adding to the chaos is Krasnostein’s own commentary, surprisingly full of disdain for some of her subjects. Despite these critiques, I’ll admit that these six stories were gripping and illuminating. I both liked and didn’t like this book, which is a bit like the portraits of life documented between the covers. I loved the idea of this, I just wish the execution had been a little cleaner. If it had, I think you would hear about this book on every street corner.

4.5/5 stars!

Excellent.

This is structurally the most annoying book I’ve ever finished. The book consists of six stories. To quote the book jacket, they are profiles of, “a death doula, a geologist who believes the world is six thousand years old, a lecturer in neurobiology who spends his weekends ghost hunting, the fiancée of a disappeared pilot and UFO enthusiasts, a woman incarcerated for killing her husband after suffering years of domestic violence, and Mennonite families in New York [City]”. The stories are told, infuriatingly to me, interleaved. It’s as if I told you I had three stories to tell you, and I proceeded with the first story, then 5 minutes into it I started the second, and 5 minutes into that I started the third. After another 5 minutes, I went back and continued the first story and so on. That’s the first half of the book. The second half tells the next group of three stories. When I got in about 1/3 of the book, I had the idea that I would just skip around and read the chapters for each story sequentially, but I realized that was too much work, since I was almost at the end of the first set of three stories. Arrggghhh!

The next problem with the book is I don’t know exactly what it’s about. On one hand (4 of the stories), it’s about people who believe things that are, for most people, unbelievable. But what about the death doula (a woman who makes it her job to guide dying people in gracefully dying), and the woman who killed her husband and went to prison? There’s nothing unbelievable or extraordinary about their stories. And even for the people who believe unbelievable things, it’s not clear what the author makes of it. On the one hand, she paints them as kooks, but on the other, she is very sympathetic to what motivates them. And after many of the chapters she adds her own bits of philosophy, which I did not find particularly interesting.

So why even three stars? It’s because I think it’s an important book. What we’re seeing world wide is an explosion of anti-science beliefs, but most people I know probably don’t know well a single person, for example, who believes that aliens are flying around the earth abducting people. With so many people believing unbelievable things, I really appreciate the author’s sincere attempt to spend a lot of time with these folks and unjudgementally try to find out what makes them tick.

apart from a few heavy handed stylistic crutches, I think this book is very good

I haven't found a non-fiction author whose writing and observations I love like this since reading Helen Garner at uni. As a writer, I wanted to savour her sentences, her gentle rendering of her subjects, her compelling prose.

Every time I've tried to gather my thoughts enough to write about 'The Believer', I find myself stumped with how to describe it - other than the experience of reading it feels connecting somehow. Like I am somehow connected to all these people who hold such vastly different belief systems to my own by our shared humanity. Which, isn't that what the world really needs right now?

I know this is a book I'm going to read again.

The Believer is a product of several years of research, exploring six different belief systems and the people who hold them. Among them, we visit the lives of people who believe in UFOs and that aliens will some day come to earth, a conservative Mennonite family in the Bronx, and a woman who has hired a "death doula" to support her while she is dying of cancer.

Sarah Krasnostein is an incredible researcher and writer, and she has the ability to capture the essence of someone so perfectly. She is very clearly skilled at building rapport and trust with people from all walks of life, and is also the kind of writer where you can feel the breeze and know what kind of light is reflecting off someone's face. Like many people, I thought her first book The Trauma Cleaner was incredible and I was very excited to read this follow up.

Unfortunately despite the wonderful prose and some of the stories being interesting, The Believer failed to suck me in as much as I wanted and I found it a bit flat. I found myself skimming through whole sections, particularly the chapters about Mennonites and the Creation Museum. But I also can't help but wonder if maybe the book just wasn't FOR me. I'm a pretty staunch atheist and a bit of a skeptic, so I found it hard to relate to people with such strong spiritual and / or religious belief systems.

Highlights were the Death Doula and Halfway Home stories, of which I could have very happily read a whole book. The women in these stories were fascinating and were what kept me reading.

Very interesting ppl.