Search (novel)

Search is a 2022 American novel written by Michelle Huneven. The novel is written as a fictionalized memoir by memoirist Dana Potowski, a food critic and memoirist who joins her Unitarian Universalist congregation's year-long search for a new minister.

The novel was based on Huneven's own experiences as a food critic and Unitarian Universalist. While promoting the book Huneven admitted that she intended to try to write one of Dana Potowski's fictional memoirs, Our Best Year, about her year cooking for her ill mother, turning it into a YA book.

Summary

Dana Potowski is a 54 year old married and childless food critic and memoirist who has lately been drifting from her Unitarian Universalist congregation. Board members, who know she is close to the minister, ask her to find out what his plans are--if he's going to stay for five years or retire. The Rev. Tom Fox in fact volunteers that he is planning to leave the ministry for a new career, so a search committee must be formed and the yearlong process to find a new minister must be undertaken.

Fox urges Dana to apply for the committee and she does, becoming one of eight members of the congregation chosen for the job. Joining Dana on the search committee are two active members of the church, Belinda and Charlotte, Sam who married into the powerful Rourke family who were founding members of the congregation, Adrian, a middle aged therapist, and three young people: Jennie, Riley and Curtis.

This book is really about group dynamics; how factions and allegiances form, how small plots and strategies are hatched in order for the new minister to be chosen. The ministers apply in a series of self-revealing steps; we get to know them first through their bios called "ministerial records," then through their more extensive and revealing websites, called "packets," which are followed up with Skype interviews and, if selected, in person weekend-long visits.

Huneven brings each minister before the searchers and the readers, where the different theologies, personalities, and preaching are put on view.

Intelligent, funny, incisive and absorbing, Search is a novel for anyone who has ever been on a committee.

Reception

Dan Cryer of The L.A. Times called it "sassy and savvy"; he writes that it is funny, though "not quite a satire, since Huneven has too much respect for all her seekers". Kirkus called it "tender, salty, and worthy of note". Describing it as "folsky", the review praised Huneven's development of church politics intrigue but criticized the memoir frame and some subplots.