Chloe misses Irene

L.B.: Enchanting, Left Behind, pp. 228-231, posted Nov 04 2006, comment at November 06 2006 at 05:47 PM

Well, of course, if the LB authors had wanted to write intelligently about how someone like Chloe might feel and think, Chloe might be reacting because all this evangelical Christian stuff reminds her too poignantly of her mother. Maybe when her mother was alive and going on about it, it bored and annoyed Chloe, and she kept wishing her mother would shut up, and stop bringing God into everything. And now her mother's dead, and Chloe walked out of last night's meeting because it was that or burst into tears because everything that wimpy little pastor said sounded like something her mother had said, and although it bores and annoys her she really wishes that her mother was saying that to her, instead of this dreary man with the grey voice. And she misses her mother so much, and her dad doesn't seem to want to talk about it, he wants her to watch this creepy video which says she should be glad her mother's gone. So she walked out halfway through and walked home, and cried a lot of the way home, but when her father got back he didn't seem to notice. And now instead of asking her what's wrong, he wants to bother her with more God-talk. Is he going to disappear too?

That's the kind of thing LB would have written if they'd actually been thinking about Chloe as a person, instead of a stock figure to be redeemed from sin.