Page "Frederick Buechner" Paragraph 46

Buechner's work has been praised highly by many reviewers of books, with the distinct exception of his second novel, The Season ’ s Difference, which was universally panned by critics and remains his biggest commercial flop.

His later novels, including the Book of Bebb series and Godric, received hearty praise ; in his 1980 review of Godric, Benjamin DeMott summed up a host of positive reviews, saying “ All on his own, Mr. Buechner has managed to reinvent projects of self-purification and of faith as piquant matter for contemporary fiction, producing in a single decade a quintet of books each of which is individual in concerns and knowledge, and notable for literary finish .” In 1982, author Reynolds Price greeted Buechner ’ s The Sacred Journey as “ a rich new vein for Buechner – a kind of detective autobiography ” and “ he result is a short but fascinating and, in its own terms, beautifully successful experiment .”