Homer, a bold and smart-mouthed angel, has been in isolation for nine-hundred years. She misbehaves and tests the boundaries of God, which was what put her in isolation in the first place. She doesn't like the simpering League of Angels members, especially Gabriel--she has no place for such a goody two-shoes--and she doesn't trust God and cares little what anyone thinks of her. Despite her fussiness and track record of failure, she's sent to Earth to do what needs to be done.
Her mission is to help Tom summers, a struggling columnist for an expanding magazine empire in Los Angeles--to Homer, the epicenter of Western egocentrism and inauthenticity. She must help him publish a book that would ultimately change Earth's fate. Unsure how to accomplish her task, she wants more of God's help or for Him to send Tom a sign, but always a stickler for free will, God won't let her interfere with humanity. Still, it's up to her to save the world, she believes God is against her, and time is ticking. No pressure.
Left to her own devices, Homer wonders whether humanity is worth saving. She believes humans to be violent, self-centered brats. Earth itself is a trash heap, already polluted by all of God's chosen people. Is there anything left to save? Tom, along with some other eccentric Earth-walkers, might change her perspective, but in the end, the fate of the world rests in Homer's angelic hands.
Terrence King’s The Silent Partner begins with a description of a sullen and outraged angel who God assigns to help a struggling columnist get his first book published. Homer – for that’s what God names the angel even though she is female – is “at once bruised and lovely, with a chubby face" which is “dark and round and smooth and full of suspicion.”
Homer is not happy: not about the cardboard box God has given her to live in or the grubby robes He forces her to wear – and especially not about having to help, once again, the infamous humans who are “known for killing themselves, their environment, and each other.”
Homer’s frustration is mirrored in the lives of the other characters. Tom, the novelist Homer is supposed to help, is thwarted in his every move. His girlfriend rejects him because he has low self-esteem. The utilities are turned off because his brother won’t pay his share of the rent. Someone at the newspaper where Tom is employed is stealing Tom’s work. The way Tom sees it, his only hope of getting out of his dead-end job, restoring his self-esteem, and getting his girlfriend back, is to get his novel published. But no one, not the agents, not his girlfriend, not his brother, not even God, likes its ending.
How Tom’s path converges with those of the other frustrated and fuming characters comprises the darkly humorous, and sometimes hilarious, stuff of this novel. King has a knack for slapstick, witticism, and ironic commentary, and he packs each of the novel’s subplots with observations informed by his uniquely quirky sense of irony.
This is a novel that will appeal to anyone who enjoys magical realism or has an appreciation for the wry, unexpected turns in life.
Also available in hardcover.
