Real life is unbelievable. Souls are snatched away from us, flesh and blood turn to dust, people you love betray you, men go to war over nothing. It's all preposterous. That's why we have novels. To make sense of things.
Alice Hoffman
Alice Hoffman, The Invisible Hour
I believe that Christianity helps us make sense of things, but novels certainly have their place. The best novels anyway.
Certainly the world we live in often is unbelievable and senseless. It is unpredictable. Fiction doesn't so much explain all this confusion as break it down into bits that help us understand human behavior and human emotions a little better. Such things as loss, betrayal and war may become a little more comprehensible in a novel or short story. And this can also be true of more positive things such as love and loyalty.
Alice Hoffman's own novel, The Invisible Hour, may be a romantic fantasy, yet it too helps make sense of real life. It's a story about freedom from oppression. It's a story about the power of books. It's a story about a mother's love. It's a story about sacrifice.
Metaphors and parables have always been used to help explain life, and a good novel is just a metaphor or a parable that goes on for hundreds of pages. Of course, some novels are so complex that we may even need help making sense of them.
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