THE BEGINNING OF CALAMITIES by Tom House

Praise from The Weekly News

House's Promising 'Beginning'

By C.L. FREY
Book Critic

Eleven-year-old Catholic school student Danny Burke, a shy fifth grader with a stutter, discovers the perfect outlet to escape the torment of recess. With painstaking diligence, he writes a play, "The Passion of Christ," its lines copied directly from the Gospels. His impressed young teacher agrees to stage it at school for Easter, and the rehearsal schedule spares him from the indignities of the playground.

It's one of the few things that works in Danny's favor in "The Beginning of Calamities," a startling debut novel from Tom House. The title is taken from a section of the New Testament known as "the apocalyptic gospel," in which Christ describes the first terrible things that will befall the apostles as they continue his ministry.

Danny believes that "The Passion of Christ" will win him the acceptance and adoration of his peers. But it's quickly apparent, in the painful moments when his teacher, Miss Kaigh, attempts to cast the play, that disaster awaits. After much goading on her part, they assemble "the shiest, most awkward students in the entire class, a veritable company of outcasts and misfits, in short, a little leper colony." (And Liz Kaigh secretly begins to fear she'll be known as "Queen of the Lepers!")

Although Danny suffers the indignation of getting passed over to play Christ, it does nothing to squelch his mounting religious fervor. With the encouragement of an imaginary biblical companion--a boy named Arram who underscores that Danny's destined to be gay--the young playwright develops a full-blown Messiah complex.

Reading "The Beginning of Calamities" almost requires peering through fingers; you want to know what happens next, yet can't bear to look. As the student cast and their teacher march toward the oncoming train of the production's unveiling--an event with implications that compound each passing day as more and more teachers ask to bring their students--House never shies from dark territory.

This is a brave debut, brimming with originality, that accurately captures the humor, poignancy and horror of an outsider's childhood.

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