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Acts Of Faith
by Philip Caputo
The award-winning author's epic fifth novel is set during the Sudanese civil war.
Knopf, 688 pages
05/03/2005
$26.95
ISBN: 0375411666
Fiction
General Literature & Fiction
Historical Fiction
All reviews are classified as one of five grades: Outstanding (4 points), Favorable (3), Mixed (2), Unfavorable (1) and Terrible (0). To calculate the Metascore, we divide total points achieved by the total points possible (i.e., 4 x the number of reviews), with the resulting percentage (multiplied by 100) being the Metascore. Learn more...
Library Journal Jim Coan
Caputo handles the scorching tragedy of this conflict in an objective and somewhat journalistic manner; the result, while not exactly a page-turner, is a compassionate and dramatic novel. [15 Feb 2005, p.130]
Kirkus Reviews
It's overlong, and overattentive to its three romantic subplots. But Acts of Faith offers an image of Africa deserving comparison with Conrad, Hemingway, Peter Matthiessen, and Jan de Hartog's forgotten near-masterpiece The Spiral Road.
Publishers Weekly
Caputo presents a sharply observed, sweeping portrait, capturing the incestuous world of the aid groups, Sudan's multiethnic mix and the decayed milieu of Kenyan society.
The New York Times Michiko Kakutani
As the book progresses, all the plot's gears slowly click into place, resulting in a story that possesses all the suspense and momentum of a Hollywood thriller and all the gravitas of a 19th-century novel.
The New York Times Book Review Lucian K. Truscott IV
While at first he allows the accumulated facts about Sudan to get in the way of his story -- he lingers too long on the details of how African bureaucracies are navigated and small aid-flight airlines are financed -- he nevertheless weaves his narrative into a tapestry as rich and varied as Sudan itself.
Booklist Keir Graff
This is a big novel, old fashioned in the best way, full of intrigue and a large cast of sharply drawn characters. [1 Feb 2005, p.916]
Chicago Tribune Art Winslow
While Caputo's characters are creations, their motivations are usually complicated enough that in its specifics Acts of Faith reads like first-hand observation. Occasionally, his characters and events do exude a sense of emotional and situational cliche, but mostly that occurs when Caputo pairs them romantically. Partly, too, that seems an unintended consequence of the scope of the book, which attempts to be panoramic and mostly succeeds.
Houston Chronicle Logan Browning
The searing power of Acts of Faith -- the impression of authenticity and deep moral seriousness -- is a miracle, because this is a very long book that often seems even longer than it is.
Los Angeles Times Michael Mewshaw
Caputo not only captures the look and smells of Africa, but he also conveys as few novelists can its mayhem, random violence and pitched battles. His action sequences are successful not simply because of their vividness and intensity, but because of his ability to identify -- and to persuade a reader to empathize -- with human beings caught up in harrowing circumstances. [9 May 2005, p.E8]
PopMatters Lester Pimentel
In his latest novel, Acts of Faith, Caputo gives us a more complex, yet equally caustic, meditation on the perils of American innocence.
Boston Globe Nathaniel Bellows
Expertly constructed yet emotionally stale.
Entertainment Weekly Mark Harris
The result is a real oddity: a book that might have been better off as nonfiction. Caputo brings a reporter's instinct and a fiction writer's soft heart to a part of the world unexplored by most of his colleagues in both fields, and it pays off in a sustained, fierce depiction of a country riven by ''a war whose beginning no one can remember, whose end no one can see, whose purpose no one knows.''
San Francisco Chronicle David Kipen
Caputo's logged more than enough time on the ground for his vision to command our attention. If only the rest of the book's too-often-turgid prose didn't turn his most important characters into mouthpieces.
The Economist
For those with a pre-conceived fascination for Africa and its unique perversities, Acts of Faith will probably prove engaging to the end. But like a three-laps-around-the-park runner on his first marathon, the more general reader may flag.
Washington Post Jonathan Yardley
No doubt Acts of Faith will be read by Caputo's admirers, but it's likely to tax their patience, and it's not likely to win him many new readers. It's an honorable effort and a serious book, but for most of the way reading it is work rather than pleasure.
 The average user rating for this book is 8.7 (out of 10) based on 4 User Votes
Note: User votes are NOT included in the Metascore calculation.
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