Book Review of Epiphany

A collection of opinions from disgruntled students

Some people enjoy judging books by their covers and although the book “Epiphany” has a lovely cover, it’s not nearly as enjoyable as it appears. Elise Ballard’s book “Epiphany” is a collection of stories from a variety of people she conducted interviews with. She gave each story the unique voice of the person who was interviewed. The reader gets a sense of each contributor’s personality, philosophy, and history. There is an atmosphere of overly sentimental themes throughout Ballard’s book. The reader is quickly guided into a subtle version of the self-help genre.

This book could have been improved with the inclusion of research based ideas. The addition of examples of epiphanies which did not turn out well for the person having the experience could have been used as well. An example would be moving to Hollywood and retiring as a waitress without a SAG card, who enjoys simple, everyday conversations with people rather than applying make-up every day and acting in front of a camera. The writing structure was an issue as far as organization is concerned. Random thoughts seemed to occur throughout her paragraph introductions for a good majority of interviews.

This book may lead readers towards other genres of literature i.e. “Dostoevsky” or “Bukowski.”The epiphany of the class is that Ballard’s future works should be avoided if they involve written word.