Book #50 The Blasphemer by Nigel Farndale

The Blasphemer

The Blasphemer by Nigel Farndale was shortlisted for the 2010 Costa Book Award, and frankly, it rather beats me as to how that happened. It isn't that it is a BAD book, dreadful to read or anything like that; it's a book which if it were a person would suffer from multiple personality disorder. It doesn't seem to know what it is, or what it wants to be. There are about five storylines:

1) Daniel and Nancy go on an exotic holiday for their anniversary and events permanently change their  relationship.

2) Andrew, a young soldier fights in WW1, whilst his grandson Philip tries to piece together his story

3) Wetherby, an embittered, pious, dried up academic seeks to destroy a colleagues career out of jealousy and spite 

4) Hamdi, an innocent Muslim teacher is labelled as a 'clean-skin' and potential terrorist by the Security Services when he is accidentally caught up in a demonstration.

5) Martha, an overly mature 9 year old, begins behaving oddly and then goes missing.

The link between all these strands is Daniel: Philip is his father, Martha his daughter, Hamdi her teacher and Wetherby his colleague. But it just doesn't work. What frustrated me whilst reading this book is that each strand, taken alone, is a brilliant premise for a novel.

The first storyline could have been a brilliant examination of the effect of a being a disaster survivor upon a relationship, the second a great historical novel about love, cowardice and the folly of war. The third a creepy, atmospheric tale about a sinister saboteur who sets out to destroy an oblivious friend. The fourth a commentary about the treatment of Muslims in a post 9/11 and 7/7 world, and the last a look at the modern world in which parents live in a culture of fear with regard to child safety.

Instead, the novel is none and all of these things, an awful mish-mash of half ideas, concepts imagined and left hanging. It really feels as though Farndale started five separate novels, got writers block and in the end just bunged them all together. It's really odd, and feels like not just a wasted opportunity but five wasted opportunities. Particularly, I felt, in the character of Wetherby alone there was real potential for deep character development and a dark psychological thriller, in the vein of Ian McEwan's Enduring Love or Zoe Heller's Notes On A Scandal, but this does not occur. 

In addition there is an examination of faith versus atheism underpinning the novel, but this again feels 'thrown in for good measure', underdeveloped and lacking in anything new to say. The end twist involving Hamdi does raise a small smile, but then the epilogue feels superfluous after this denouement.

One of the reasons I bought this novel was because of the amount of 5 star reviews it had on Amazon, which, I must say I'm a bit baffled by. One reviewer on Amazon said this :

Farndale has been compared by many to Sebastian Faulks; both for his descriptions of WW1 and tying together contemporary themes, such as fundamantalism, (sic) science and faith. Having read both 'Birdsong' and 'One week in December' (sic), I think The Blasphemer does it better.

There is NO comparison in my eyes between this book and the sublime Birdsong, or between Farndale and Faulks. I find myself slightly horrified by the suggestion. I feel like she should wash her mouth out to be honest, as should any of these 'many' making comparisons. Yes, I thought 'A Week In December' was dreadful, but that book is the exception to my experience with Faulks as a writer. Faulks, at least, takes one idea and develops it, whereas Farndale can't seem to decide what the hell he wants his book to be about. There are some ridiculous 'as if' coincidences at the end too, such as the conclusion of the Wetherby storyline and the Martha storyline.

A book of opportunities wasted, I'm going to give this 5/10 a point for every great novel it could so easily have been.

Book #34 The Good Man Jesus And The Scoundrel Christ by Philip Pullman

The Good Man Jesus And The Scoundrel Christ
 
After I'd completed this novel I read that it belonged to The Canongate Myths Series, a range of books by prominent authors retelling popular myths. Margaret Atwood chose the Odyssey and wrote The Penelopiad, Michael Faber chose Prometheus and wrote The Fire Gospel, Jeanette Winterson chose Atlas and wrote 'Weight' etc. For Pullman, an atheist, Christianity was his myth of choice.

Philip Pullman of course is most famous for the popular 'His Dark Materials' trilogy, a series of books that I have always meant to read and never have. I remember being quite excited when I saw this book, an adult book, being released and immediately intended to read it. I have an interest in philosophy and theology, I was quite excited by it.

I don't know why I expected it, but I expected grown up, intriguing detailed, original prose, asking important questions and sparking thought. The central conceit is interesting of itself that instead of having one child Mary had twins, one called Jesus and the other known as Christ. In their childhood it was Christ who was considered special but in adulthood Jesus became the preacher and Christ his biographer taking notes of his teachings. Christ, religious in himself wants to build his own Church and so he begins to make changes to the stories of Jesus to "improve" them or leave things out according to his own agenda.

I think Pullman thinks he's being very clever here by using the Christ character to point out that the Gospel stories as we know them are probably not an accurate depiction of the life of Jesus and that the authors of the Bible had their own agenda. However anyone with a basic amount of New Testament theology knowledge knows The Bible was written many years after the death of Jesus.
That which we call the Gospel According to "Mark" is actually a redaction of multiple sources most notably the Q source and that there was probably no "Mark" in the first instance. So this isn't news to me. Even most educated people without theological knowledge are not under the assumption that the Bible Stories are entirely fact; just the written record of the oral tradition of the Jewish people and early Christians, which of course is subject to loss and change over time prior to becoming a written record.  It's the only point he really makes, and I probably just made the same point in a better way. It feels quite patronising in a way like atheist Pullman thinks he's just come up with this idea that none of these " silly Christian types" have considered, the fact that an editing process went into constructing the Bible and how far can we trust it as an accurate historical document therefore? Perhaps I'm wrong but I'd like to think that most Christians have considered this as a philosophical issue. "History is written by the victors" said Winston Churchill. The history books are biased too.

He got a lot of flak from Christian fundamentalists for blasphemous content, but I don't even think its particularly blasphemous. It is frustrating and it is irritating. The basic content of the book is Gospel Stories, but they are written in such a simplistic style that it literally feels like reading a Child's Bible. He just tells the stories you already know if you grew up with them with no vast differences between what Pullman's Jesus says and the Jesus of the Bible despite the rather minor, it has to be said, meddling of the scoundrel Christ.

If you ask me you'd be better off reading a copy of the New Testament whilst bearing in mind that the stories therein probably didn't occur exactly as described if indeed they occurred at all. I found this book a massive disappointment, I was expecting something a lot more, perhaps a lot more adult, a lot more challenging and I think crucially a lot more controversial and informed. I think I wanted that. Instead what I got was a rather pointless alternate spin on the New Testament for kids with delusions of grandeur of mentally ill proportions. I don't think it was meant as a kids book though, it certainly wasn't marketed that way, which leaves me sort of flummoxed by it.
As far as I was concerned it's all a bit Emperor's New Clothes.

I do like the word Scoundrel though. It's a great word.

I think I can only give this book a 3/10. If I wanted to read a Child's Bible I'd buy one.