Title: Heike’s Void
Author: Steven L. Peck
Publisher: By Common Consent Press
Genre: Novel
Year Published: 2022
Number of Pages: Paperback: 352
Reviewed by Rachel Helps
Heike’s Void is probably best read blind to the details of its plot. Here is a little spoiler-free overview: There are four main living characters:
-a General Authority (whom God hates)
-his secretary
-a Moabite man who spent some time in the army
-a German woman who is really into the esotericism of the void.
Additionally, Nephi is the Moabite’s guardian angel. Each main character had layers of ethical dilemmas that were pleasing to behold. There were occasional sentences that made me pause in awe or hilarity, and there were theological questions that I will be chewing on for a while.
When I was a little freshman at BYU in 2005, I remember buying Godel, Escher, Bach with my birthday money. It discussed Godel’s incompleteness theorem and the philosophical and mathematical problems of self-reference and sets of sets that don’t include themselves in playful conversations between Achilles and a tortoise. Heike’s discussions of the void have similar themes, but lean into the mysticism that surrounds the impossibility of describing or thinking about something that doesn’t exist. It was fun then and it’s still fun now.
However fun it was, I still have a question. What was the purpose of her discussions of the void? (view spoiler)
In the end, (view spoiler) I’m thinking about Heike a lot, but the other characters had interesting progressions too.
There was one last thing I wanted to mention. I’ve used my own writing to work through some of my own psychological wrinkles. I think Steven Peck might use writing in the same way. On Snap Judgement, Lori Peck, Steven’s wife, spoke about her experience with Steven’s brainworm-caused madness. It was understandably a really difficult time for her. (view spoiler)
I think everyone should read this book. It isn’t as weird or difficult as Gilda Trillum. But it is the good weird that makes a little space for Mormon misfits like myself.