The Gathering of the Aspects

Lawrence Mathews is an associate professor of English at Memorial
University of Newfoundland and the author of Norman Levine and His
Works.

Notwithstanding its claim to be “based on uncanonized scriptures and
gnostic literature,” this pretentious first novel is pure soap opera,
teeming with stock characters—a hooker with a heart of gold, a shady
evangelist, a sadistic nutcase—who trace their origins to prime-time
television. There’s sex, violence, and wooden dialogue, but nothing
for the mind or heart. Why The Gathering of the Aspects was published is
a mystery more profound than any addressed by the novel itself.