Finding Bartholomew: A Demented Tale from the Prophet by D. Chris Lemme

I had no idea what I expected when I opened this up but it certainly wasn’t what I got!

This was a true journey of discovery, a peek inside the inner sanctum of a man teetering on the edge of sanity and the story is one that you will not easily forget.

Steve is pushed into action when events on a much larger scale force him to take a good hard look at his life and conclude that he needs to make some serious changes.

But what can you reasonably surmise when it is doubtful that your mental state is so disjointed?

He was an affable man, a solid enough citizen, husband, father, artist but that doesn’t mean that his life has the totality that you might consider, he has a mind that as a layman I would have to say was verging on the demented. I spent much of the book with the impression that he was as crazy as a box of frogs but I could be wrong and in saying that, it doesn’t mean I didn’t like him; I just didn’t understand him much of the time, his intensity was overwhelming!

His story flits from fact to fiction and being inside his head, party to his thoughts while he examines his life, is at times a pretty freaky place to be.

I was surprised how much his dilemma touched me, I found his quest so to speak desperate.

His life issues resonated with me and I think they will with many of the readers, it glimpses into aspects that are all too familiar and more common that many of us would like to give acceptance too.

Can he make the changes he so desperately searches for?

The story is a true introspective, I thought it encouraged me as a reader to look at life as the bigger picture, to see that relationships even those with ourselves are not forged or created, they evolve, they are organic and we are ill placed to try and force a want or need for nothing other than whim or circumstance.

I think the author has an intellectually creative style, direct and thought provoking prose meant that I spent much of the book considering the fact that as we journey along our individual paths were are continually bumped off course by the ripples of everyone else’s wave.

Finding a happiness is not always a right it is an aspiration but did Steve have what it would take to achieve his gratification?

This was an intensely private and complete story of one man’s journey to save his soul and his sanity.