TEST
All the while I was reading Always by Trevor Meldal-Johnsen, I was wondering how I was going to write this review without offending people. Let me begin by saying that it is not my intention to insult anyone’s beliefs or spirituality. My opinion of this book is based on its effectiveness as a piece of fiction. It is not a judgment on the spiritual beliefs it expresses.
Writer Gregory Thomas is sitting in a theater, watching an old 1940s movie, when the actress in the film speaks the following lines: “I’ve loved you since the first sun rose. I’ve loved you through God-sent catastrophe and man-made disaster. My love has no shame, no pride. It is only what it is, always has been, and always will be. It is yours. All yours. Only yours.” Greg, to his surprise, begins to cry. From that moment forward he is completely in love and obsessed with the actress in the film, Brooke Ashley. Nothing – not his girlfriend’s hissy fits, not his work, not the Oscar nomination he just received for best screenplay – can distract Greg from Brooke Ashley.
He soon discovers that Brooke died in a fire in 1949 with her lover, Michael Richardson. Claiming to be writing a book about her, Greg begins to research her life.
Long after the reader figures it out, Greg realizes that he is the reincarnation of Brooke’s lover, Michael. With the aid of a psychic who knew Brooke, he sets about trying to understand, and to find Brooke’s new incarnation. At the same time he must cope with his girlfriend, who is jealous of his obsession with Brooke, and with his own terrifying nightmares warning him to leave Brooke alone.
This novel came to me accompanied by a very nice letter from the author’s wife, telling me that it sold a million copies when Avon originally published it in 1979. She decided to have it re-released as a quality hardback due to overwhelming reader response. There is also an afterward by the author, in which he talks about letters from readers describing how this book changed their lives. Meldal-Johnsen describes his own spiritual quest and how it led him to Scientology.
As I mentioned before, I don’t want to pass judgment on the philosophies that underlie this novel. My critique is strictly based on how well Always works as a novel. And unfortunately, it doesn’t work well at all.
Always reads like a stew of clumsily-expressed clichés. There’s the Hollywood agent who calls his clients “babe.” There’s the obsessive, parasitic Hollywood mom. There’s the psychic, whose name is Madame Olga Nabokov. There’s the fire, which the protagonist is astonished to discover was deliberately set. In fact, the protagonist is continually astonished by things that I had assumed chapters before.
Sometimes the dialogue is turgid, and sometimes it sounds like this: “The postulate is first made in your universe, by which I mean the universe of thought, your mind. Then, through action, it becomes a reality in the physical universe.” Do you know many people who speak like this? Finally, the protagonist, Greg, is a man who treats his various lovers with a sort of casual backhanded cruelty that almost made me think he deserves to die in another fire.
I guess I’d have to say that the love scenes in this novel are hot, because they’re fairly explicit. However, they are also filled with awkward phrases and bungled metaphors that are inadvertently funny rather than erotic: “She screamed her love and thrashed against him like a wild filly,” or my favorite, “The depths in her eyes threatened to burst into flame.” Ow!
I didn’t like one single thing about this book. It’s a cross between a novel and a tract, and the novel side suffered from the union. I can’t say that it doesn’t work on any level: two people at amazon.com gave it five-star reviews, and I have the evidence, presented to me by the author and his wife, of all the people who say their lives were changed. It didn’t change my life, except to make me wish I’d spent those hours reading something else.
Grade: F
Book Type: Fiction
Sensuality: Hot
Review Date: 06/10/99
Publication Date: 1998
Related Reviews
Recent Comments …
Yep
This sounds delightful! I’m grabbing it, thanks
excellent book: interesting, funny dialogs, deep understanding of each character, interesting secondary characters, and also sexy.
I don’t think anyone expects you to post UK prices – it’s just a shame that such a great sale…
I’m sorry about that. We don’t have any way to post British prices as an American based site.
I have several of her books on my TBR and after reading this am moving them up the pile.