On the other hand, I didn’t think that the satire went far enough. The bizarre thing is that in the end it follows the same narrative arc and ends up in a similar place to Mormon romance novels. I found it to easy to parse.

Which would be fine, but I think it needed to be a little more literary and a little less genre. I’m generally not one to want people to get all literary. I’m a big fan of genre fiction. But a little more Saul Bellow/John Updike would have helped the novel considerably, imo.

But I do want to point out that it has a unique place in the small world of Mormon novels and is worth reading (assuming, of course, that you won’t be put off completely by some of the things Laura talks about in the review). I read both it and Brother Brigham quite close together and initially thought that Brother Brigham was the better novel and the more interesting one in terms of Mormon fiction, but as time has passed my opinion has reversed.

I don’t pretend that I followed some kind of strategy to put across some kind of message; I mainly just gave voice to my subconscious impulses, and perhaps the novel even reflects some of my passive-aggressiveness against the religion, the culture, and this earthly dilemma. You may find it interesting to hear that I originally wrote it with mainly a non-Mormon audience in mind, readers who would be interested in a Mormon story with no agenda to prove or disprove the religion, readers who might want to walk in the shoes of a flawed Mormon protagonist trying to find her place in the world.