Religion usually doesnt have a prayer in literary fiction. From novels, youd never suspect that tens of millions of Americans attend services every week and pray every day. Sure, there are lots of religious books published in the United States, from sacred texts to inspirational tracts and even sizzling Christian romances, but ascend into the heavenly realm of Serious Fiction, and youll find that Nietzsche was largely right about God. Marilynne Robinson, Alice McDermott, Bob Shacochis the authors who take matters of the spirit seriously could barely fill one pew.

Its striking then to find this month two very different novels that focus on spirituality and even more rare the challenges of devotion. They both dare to enter a sanctuary that few contemporary authors are willing to set foot in.

Bruce Wagner is a parishioner at the holy church of Hollywood. Hes written and directed screenplays, and his name-dropping novels, such as last years Dead Stars, sacrifice the Beautiful People on a glitzy altar of satire. Hes also long been drawn to mysticism, both for his own enlightenment (he was a disciple of the late Carlos Castaneda) and, weirdly, for his acidic comedies (see Still Holding).

The Empty Chair, his new book, has nothing to do with Clint Eastwoods speech at the 2012 Republican National Convention (although its easy to imagine that unhinged moment of our political history as something Wagner would dream up). Instead, The Empty Chair is a pair of thinly conjoined novellas presented as two long, unabridged interviews with practitioners of diet Buddhism seekers slouching toward spiritual redemption.

The first novella by far the better one is a monologue delivered by a 50-year-old gay man at a monastery in Big Sur. Wagner forces himself and us to adhere to the books fictive form: The interview wanders, skips and misfires in a way that reminds us that, in contrast, almost all the interviews we see on TV, hear on the radio or read in the newspaper have been trimmed and arranged as artfully as this Sundays floral display. For many pages, Wagners narrator chats around, offering up his mildly assuming patter of literary allusions and self-deprecating asides: If the Buddhists call sitting meditation zazen, I call my theosophy vanzen because I live in my van, he says. I cant conceive of a life without the ol Greater Vehicle.

Its the illusion of rambling that makes this section so remarkable. But what seems like witty digression about his beatnik idols is really self-conscious delay, the nervous stalling of a man skating around something too painful to approach headlong. Soon we learn that he was sexually abused as a child by a Catholic priest, an ordeal that sent him searching for peace in Buddhism. But even darker traumas lurk in this extraordinary confession. As he begins to describe the woman he married and the spiritually precocious little boy they raised together, the story slips into unimaginably tragic territory.

Wagners real subject here is spiritual pride among the devout struggling toward Nothingness to prove who shall be least. His narrator has a wry sense of humor about this world of competitive enlightenment, but theres no smirking when he finally arrives at what it costs a child to be infected with his parents metaphysical shtick. Can a young boy subsist on the wheatgrass and tofu of passive-aggressively homicidal Zen platitudes? No matter where you are in the 31 Realms of Existence, youll feel shaken by this devastating story.

Speaking of nothingness, dont bother with the second novella of The Empty Chair. Its the maundering tale of a woman recalling her affair with a wealthy criminal who was determined to find his guru in India. Tedious and convoluted, this story offers no emotional impact whatsoever, and, worse, its last-ditch effort to connect with the first novella feels like an act of desecration.

Vatican Waltz

Roland Merullos last few books have been gently comic novels about faith and spirituality, from Golfing With God to Lunch With Buddha. Although those cloying titles may sound like purgatory, the stories themselves are redeemed by Merullos winning sweetness. Of course, if you need your religious figures frozen in dark stained glass, you should probably pass by on the other side, but if youre hip to a little irreverence and humor in divine matters, you might like him very much.

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Book World: ‘The Empty Chair’ and ‘Vatican Waltz’