Tom Harpur, religion columnist for the Toronto Star and host of the Vision-TV series Life After Death, aims to discuss how we send thoughts of thanks or petition to God, and why. He uses his own life and, in particular, recent reminders of his own mortality to lend credibility and immediacy to his study. As autobiography it offers some interest, but readers grappling with curiosity, wonder, and faith might be better served by other works that combine personal and sacred texts, such as Leon Wieseltier’s recent Kaddish.

Harpur’s folksy writing, beset with clichés, has the self-consciously hip style of a youth-centre guidance counsellor: “The various authors of the Psalter have left us the most intimate ‘soul diary’ or ‘prayer diary’ possible. They have let everything ‘hang out’ so to speak.” The small scope of the book requires Harpur to gloss over questions like why we refer to God as “he” and to what extent God shapes our destinies, and focus instead on self-help-style suggestions for action. Though he refers to decades of scholarship, readers get only a limited analysis: although Prayer makes 54 references to outside primary religious texts, 23 are from the Harpur oeuvre.

But the author’s laudable acceptance of world faiths and a gender-free divinity may return some cynics to the fold, and there are occasional insights of value, like his recognition that treating prayer as a ritual (and God as a purely external force) can lead to simple idolatry. Yet if it’s true that God is in the details, this book shows that any devotional treatise without adequate thoroughness must stumble.