{"id":2912,"date":"2023-11-01T10:43:02","date_gmt":"2023-11-01T10:43:02","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kangaroovalley.nsw.au\/valleyvoice\/?p=2912"},"modified":"2023-11-01T10:43:02","modified_gmt":"2023-11-01T10:43:02","slug":"lay-your-body-down-by-amy-suiter-clarke","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kangaroovalley.nsw.au\/valleyvoice\/2023\/11\/01\/lay-your-body-down-by-amy-suiter-clarke\/","title":{"rendered":"Lay Your Body Down by Amy Suiter Clarke"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If you are a Pentecontalist, don\u2019t read this book. Although, on second thoughts, perhaps you should.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">So how should I describe the book? I can\u2019t improve on this interpretation by one reviewer:<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">\u201cA small-town murder mystery that is also a searing examination of rigid religious ideology, the mindset and psychology of indoctrination, and the devastating consequences for women\u2019s lives and autonomy. <\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Lay Your Body Down<\/span> <span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">is not only a gripping thriller, but a nuanced and compelling exploration of faith, family, power and accountability.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">I think I can disclose this much of the plot without a spoiler alert. Del, the narrator, is a 26-year-old woman who, several years earlier, had abandoned the Pentecontalist church in which she\u2019d been brought up, for reasons which are gradually disclosed. She returns to her home town, which is dominated by the church, to attend a funeral of a former boyfriend, whose death has been explained as an accident. Del has her doubts, and determines to find out the truth. In the course of her investigation, in which she perseveres despite the increasingly hostile efforts of the church to prevent it, she suspects various members of the church as murderers, but the truth is withheld from her, and the reader, until the final chapter.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">The author describes it as the best book she has written. I can detect only one other (<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Girl, 11<\/span><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">), and I don\u2019t intend to read it, for fear of disappointment.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">If you\u2019ve read a book that you\u2019ve particularly enjoyed, why not tell us about it, so that other Voice readers can share your enjoyment?<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Tony Barnett<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>If you are a Pentecontalist, don\u2019t read this book. Although, on second thoughts, perhaps you should. So how should I describe the book? I can\u2019t improve on this interpretation by one reviewer: \u201cA small-town murder mystery that is also a searing examination of rigid religious ideology, the mindset and psychology of indoctrination, and the devastating [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":11,"featured_media":2913,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[48],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2912","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-book-review"],"acf":[],"distributor_meta":false,"distributor_terms":false,"distributor_media":false,"distributor_original_site_name":"Kangaroo Valley Voice","distributor_original_site_url":"https:\/\/kangaroovalley.nsw.au\/valleyvoice","push-errors":false,"amp_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kangaroovalley.nsw.au\/valleyvoice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2912","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kangaroovalley.nsw.au\/valleyvoice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kangaroovalley.nsw.au\/valleyvoice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kangaroovalley.nsw.au\/valleyvoice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/11"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kangaroovalley.nsw.au\/valleyvoice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2912"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/kangaroovalley.nsw.au\/valleyvoice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2912\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2914,"href":"https:\/\/kangaroovalley.nsw.au\/valleyvoice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2912\/revisions\/2914"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kangaroovalley.nsw.au\/valleyvoice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/2913"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kangaroovalley.nsw.au\/valleyvoice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2912"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kangaroovalley.nsw.au\/valleyvoice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2912"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kangaroovalley.nsw.au\/valleyvoice\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2912"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}