Stealing Heaven from the Lips of God
by Richard Blaise

  With Stealing Heaven from the Lips of God, Dee Rimbaud has created a compelling work that takes the reader along the tortured path of "salvation" experienced by the protagonist, Robbie. 

The first part of the book would almost be viewed as a post-modern Naked Lunch, replete with such sexual and drug escapades, except that Robbie does not submerge himself in such blind brutal acceptance of his fate as did Burroughs.  He is rather continually arriving at the point where he realizes for the sake of survival and sanity he must own up to himself and his life.  The maddening aspect for the reader is whether he will finally come to terms with himself and live, die, or go mad.  Rimbaud's deft handling keeps the reader consumed in following the directions Robbie's journey takes.

The novel is written in the form of a blog, the present day internet diary one sees often portrayed in literature these days.  Rimbaud does not succumb to the trite or maudlin that has been seen from the hand of a lesser writer when using this motif.

In many ways Robbie is Quixotic, tilting the windmills of his personal daemons as he alternates between confronting and hiding from the responsibility for his actions in life:

Only the readers of this journal – who I will never know –  will know the secrets of my corrupted heart. Only you can absolve me. Not by your judgement or goodness, but by your presence. I unburden myself in this cyber confessional to you people out there, my readers, who in the sum of your parts are the 21 st century's equivalent of the priesthood. There's no more tying the cat to the bed, no more praising of plaster  cast statues, no more corruption, no more meaningless rituals, no more pointless repeated prayers, no more unlikely virgins, no more conduits to God, no more hierarchies. We're all equal now: all of us, lords of the new church. Each and every one of us is both clergy and laity. We rove through the cyber universe, reading through the confessions of each others hearts, absolving each other. We are voyeur and exhibitionist, each to each other. 

This arrangement is the perfect symbiosis.

This is the closest to love we'll ever know.   

Or maybe not, for in my heart I feel a stirring I've never known before. I know I may be deceiving myself: it's been that long since I last fell in love, I might just be suffering from delusions.  

In my hard, festering heart, I still hope to transcend the rotten ring of self and find this thing called love.

As the book progresses Rimbaud leads us on some plot twists that one would not have expected from where the story began.  In the end we discover that Robbie is neither Burroughs nor Quixote, but a man who through his own growth and the pieces of blind luck that glue all lives together resolves more than one would have expected from him.

However, all that happens to him is plausible within the boundaries of the world Rimbaud has created.  This structure makes for a highly entertaining and thought provoking work this reviewer recommends highly.