The back cover of my edition has a review from Edmund White
of the “Irish Times” that says “This is a short book, but it is as dense as a
diamond”, I agree, it is a short book, and yes it could be called dense, it
could also be called presumptuous.
In 1953 Nikos Kazantzakis had his novel “The Last Temptation
of Christ” published, the novel being written from Christ’s perspective, a
human, a man also subjected to self-doubt, fear and of course temptation. In
1955 he was apparently excommunicated from the Greek Orthodox Church for his
writing. Imagine making Christ a mere mortal, even if it was for literary
purposes.
So now we have Colm Toibin revisiting the story of Jesus’
mother, Mary. In this book she is a mere mortal, a mother struggling to come to
terms with the reverence that is being bestowed upon her child:
He was the boy I had given birth
to and he was more defenceless now than he had been then. And in those days
after he was born, when I held him and watched him, my thoughts included the
thought that I would have someone now to watch over me when I was dying, to
look after my body when I had died. In those days if I had ever dreamed that I
would see him bloody, and the crowd around filled with zeal that he should be
bloodied more, I would have cried out as I cried out that day and the cry would
have come from a part of me that is the core of me. The rest of me is merely flesh
and blood and bone.
This story relies heavily on you already understanding
Christian dogma, there is a basic assumption that the Bible’s teachings of
walking on water, turning water into wine and healing sick etc. is base knowledge:
In the kitchen the next morning
news came that Martha, Mary and Lazarus were going to come to Miriam’s house
first, and then accompany us to the feast. Lazarus was still weak, we were
told, and his sisters had become aware of how afraid people were of him. ‘He
lives with the secret that none of us knows,’ Miriam said. ‘His spirit had time
to take root in the other world, and people are afraid of what he could say,
the knowledge he could impart. His sisters do not want to go alone with him to
the wedding.’
The sorry, inner lament that is Mary’s story as she recalls
the pain of a grieving mother is amazingly mapped throughout, paced
immaculately (nice word for a review of this type) and nuanced with slow reflective
passages.
And then time created the man who
sat beside me at the wedding feast in Cana, the man not heeding me, hearing no
one, a man filled with power, a power that seemed to have no memory of years
before, when he needed my breast for milk, my hand to help steady him as he
learned to walk, or my voice to soothe him to sleep.
Interestingly the name “Jesus” is not mentioned once
throughout but I can imagine this book will still upset a number of
fundamentalists, as it explores the inner machinations of Mary as she is
telling her tale to the disciples who want to continue the good word.
Personally I thought this no more “outrageous” than Kazantzakis’ Last
Temptation and to be honest some of the last sections that call into question
the historical accuracy of biblical tales could well be considered more heretic
than Kazantzakis’ work. That is not, in any way, to say this is a lesser work,
nor a story not worth exploring.
I have done my best to not refer to Colm Toibin’s latest
work as a “novel” throughout this review as it is not, it is a short story –
even if it is as “dense as a diamond”. As a result I don’t think this will be
announced as the winner of the 2013 Man Booker Prize (unless the judges think
controversy is a good thing) as besides being too short a work it also relies
very much on readers having an understanding of Christian teachings – if you
did not know about Lazarus coming back from the dead and living with his
sisters what sort of fantasy would you be reading?
There is no doubt that this is a fine work but not a gong
winner for mine.
No comments:
Post a Comment