This is not a book about God at all but one of the roots of identity and discovering oneself. What I found most attractive was the variety of vivid characters, all of whom resemble people I have known but are their own individuals.
Goldstein writes a beautiful lucid prose that never tires. What some reviewers call flashbacks are integral to the protagonist's present, just as we act on the basis of carried images and beliefs. I found it beautifully done. The climactic debate is pitch perfect and incontestably realistic.
But Goldstein is too wise to think that life ends in triumph but instead goes on in a precarious balance of reason and feeling.