An Affair of the Mind
Mixing personal testimony with systematic critique is a staple of hortative religious literature, and Hall's book is a superior example of the type. She has spent years struggling with her husband's addiction to pornography, and for those who doubt that sexual obsessions can have effects like those of substance abuse on individual behavior and interpersonal relations, she lays out the dismayingly credible particulars of her troubled marriage in evidence. First deepening her Christian faith (abandoning herself to Christ, she says), she made prayer, reading the Bible, and learning about sexual addiction and the psychological dynamics of pornography and how to address them the everyday tactics in her battle to preserve her marriage and protect her children. Trusting the Lord and practicing Christian forgiveness (a quality she tellingly dissects) have been the foundations of her overall strategy. She urges women in similar circumstances to follow her--or, rather, Christ's--lead. Meanwhile, she makes a case against pornography that, although rooted in Christian teaching about sexuality, even nonbelievers may find intuitively compelling.Ray Olson