'I hope that Bacon Sandwiches And Salvation will make you laugh, or at least smile, and also that you will not hurt yourself too badly when you trip over the occasional serious or whimsical bits.' So Mr Plass warns his readers before ushering us into his satirical, sometimes contraversial, frequently flippant and wonderfully engaging worldview. And I have to say, he couldn't have hit the nail any firmer on the head. This book made me laugh at loud, and then stutter, swallow hard, blink a few times and ponder each new, fertile patch of turf Plass pointed out in his usual unexpected way. There were gentle slopes leading to great pastures and great big walls of growth that slammed you in the face and made you wonder how he'd sneaked that one up on you.
It's not as easy to read as much of his earlier work, probably purely because it's not a novel, but the dictionary-style layout makes it easy to dip into at random intervals when you feel like a spiced bite to liven up your daily reading. It feels a lot darker than perhaps would be expected as well, and there were times when I put it down in despair after feeling yet another of Plass's blunt insights slice away the varnish and expose a flash of white bone, in both myself and the church. But despite the ouches, this book paints an accurate, funny portrait every Christian will recognise and is well worth the read. Plass's lyrics under 'Anglican' sum up his message rather well: church life can be foolish, strangled, trendy, dusty, awkward, puzzling, stupid, ghastly and tender - but the coffee's always free.