Clean

Clean
Ken Sweet
Lulu Press
ISBN: 1411696018
Fiction, Spiritual, Paranormal
Reviewed by Dr. Tami Brady

Ben Whyte had one goal in life, he wanted to become clean. As an eight year old child, suffering from pneumonia, he had a vision- a man who wouldn’t allow him into the bathroom. The only one who didn’t automatically believe that the incident wasn’t a hallucination was his grandmother. She told the boy that she wasn’t sure what the vision meant but insisted that he keep God close to his heart. Cleanliness is next to Godliness, she told him. Ben took this phrase into his being.
Year later, Ben had found himself in a sorry place- a bad marriage, an unfulfilling job, and seemingly no hope of change. As time went on, it became clearer and clearer that Ben needed to find a way to clean up his life and start anew. A trip to Britain would lead him to this goal.
I am completely fascinated by stories that adhere to Campbell’s cycle of a hero, basically a personal quest that follows along the lines of the Grail quests of King Arthur. Clean is a perfect modern example of such a quest. Moreover, this story meshes perfectly the world that we all live in and the Arthurian world of Knights and honour that many of us wish still existed.