Book #11 The Tongues Of Men Or Angels by Jonathan Trigell

The Tongues Of Men Or Angels

The Tongues Of Men Or Angels will be released on February 19th 2015, my thanks to the publisher Corsair for the complimentary copy.


The Tongues Of Men And Angels is Jonathan Trigell’s fourth novel, following Boy A, Cham, and Genus and I’ve spent 2 years waiting for it. In what is something of a departure for him we have moved from contemporary analysis of society from within the parameters of fiction to an analysis of an historical one. Specifically, the moment the line on the calendar of time blurs between BC and AD, the birth not of a man, but of a religion, how a man became a legend.

I would imagine that this book is really many different books depending on the position of belief in the reader, to come to this book having been raised in the faith, and particularly with a good working knowledge of the Bible would I imagine be an entirely different experience from somebody who had been brought up in a secular way, either with definitive lack of belief, or of a plain position of being undecided on the matter, the wisest of course knowing they don’t know.
I was brought up in the Christian faith but beyond childhood have always practiced discernment, critical thinking and an open mind. I do not have either a blind faith or an unquestioning one and sometimes struggle to define what it is I truly believe. I studied theology and as a consequence made certain departures from the faith of a child, but I suppose I’d come to a conclusion that if Christianity were a cake then the bits that were clearly untrue, myth or embellishment could be brushed off like unwanted hundreds and thousands and the legit part of the cake was still pretty tasty.    

It is impossible to really know what went on in those bygone days and that I suppose is the reason this book is marketed as a fiction, because Trigell’s guess is as good as anyone’s at the end of the day, but I read that sentence and it sounds dismissive and this is a book which is nigh on impossible to dismiss, mostly because sometimes it doesn’t feel like you’re reading fiction at all but rather facts written in a creative way. It’s a bit like this book predates the New Testament and the New Testament as we know it today is its blockbuster movie adaptation “inspired by a true story”.

Prior to this novel I’d read Pullman’s The Good Man Jesus And The Scoundrel Christ, and Colm Toibin’s The Testament Of Mary both of which irked me for an identical reason. The purpose of both those books appeared to be the author jumping out from behind a couch and shouting “SURPRISE! The Bible’s version of events and people probably isn’t what actually went down” only you aren’t remotely surprised and it's not news and the point is just beyond basic.

As a theologian at heart I was kind of yearning for someone to say something more intelligent and now someone has.

In the Tongues Of Men And Angels the version Jonathan Trigell posits here is a full scale assault, a veritable disembowelment of the Christian faith as we know it, if the true part of Christianity were a cake that cake would be burning in an oven in a house that had fallen down in an earthquake - GOOD LUCK FINDING YOUR CAKE. That is, not in terms of what is or isn't really true, but that which we can know for certain. It seriously impacted my religious beliefs for sure, and on that level could prove uncomfortable for some.

What he has done is a forensic examination of what is known of that era in terms of Judaism, local cultural customs, the way of life and contemporary history and takes the Bible stories contextualises them and goes not from all is true or some is true, or none is true, but “given what we do know amalgamated with what is said to be true what is MOST LIKELY to be true?

Be warned this is not a book which will have universal appeal if you like your Christianity to be fundamentalist, bigoted and unchallenged.

The format of the novel shifts in time; before the crucifixion, after the crucifixion and onto the birth of a church. At times these shifts were hard to rearrange into a linear chronology, but not in a way that really effected the ongoing plot.

Yeshua the Jew, son of Joseph, claims the line of David, he has some support, and he espouses a certain way of living, for his faith is an eschatological one. After his death his followers continue to live in the ways he taught, and it is essentially a small sect within Judaism known as The Way.

Enter Saul of Tarsus better known as Paul. Paul converts to The Way of The Nazerenes after a “vision”. There’s a problem. Paul is an arrogant man who wants to achieve greatness and Paul is a zealot. Paul never knew Yeshua, but believes he is special, more special indeed than the living men who knew him and loved him, who remember his words and his beliefs.

The Early Church stands in two camps, followers of a lifestyle, and a man who would turn flesh and bone into a deity, a man who will morph and manipulate The Way to “sell” it for ends that justify means, who won’t be told what to do or follow the rules and in spreading the cause to Europe will turn his back on Judaism for good.

With this novel Jonathan Trigell has attempted and, I would say successfully, to insert some intellectual honesty into the jumble sale Magic Jesus that we have today. There were some great moments in the prose reflective of what it is to be human, as Jesus was, essentially.

Prior to the book there were stories/aspects of the faith such as Christmas celebrations that I knew were completely groundless not merely standing on a shaky one but from a personal educational perspective there were moments that were simultaneously revelatory, and annoying, annoying solely in the sense that my mind was both blown and yet I felt an imbecile for never spotting it myself. 

There are minor imperfections, the use of Anglo-Saxon swearing is jarring, it somehow doesn’t flow, even though the book is (obviously) written in Modern English. Use of distinctly Northern colloquial words like ‘daft’ and ‘gubbins’ seem to feel out of place too, though I’ve since dated ‘daft’ back to the 14th Century. 

Occasionally, we slip into either repetitious prose, or the belabouring of a point.  The Irish joke ‘to get there you wouldn’t start from here‘ is used many times over the course of a few pages, and there is an exhaustive listing not once but twice of Yahweh’s Old Testament victories, which within its context feels like an excellent point, excessively made. There are other examples of this too.

To single these out in this way, feels slightly like nitpicking when placed within my opinion of the book overall which was, as has become customary with Jonathan Trigell’s work, very high. I have always held things which are clever in high esteem and there were times I felt it bordered on genius.     

For a book that decimates a belief system it ends on a very hopeful note, that perhaps if Jesus was never worthy of our worship, he remains worthy of our respect, righteous in all his ways.

In truth I feel like I’ve been waiting for someone to write this book for a lot longer than two years, and I’m pleased to say I feel like it was worth the wait. The Guardian gave this a bad review, ignore it.

Verdict 9/10


2015 Challenge : Given that this book got a scathing review in the Guardian this week, in terms of the challenge I'll call this my "book with bad reviews"

Book #95 The Testament Of Mary by Colm Toibin

The Testament Of Mary

It is an unintentional coincidence that I read The Testament Of Mary so soon after having read the also Biblical era set The Red Tent, about Jacob's daughter Dinah. For me there was plenty of contrast between the two and not much of it good.

I had mixed feelings about The Testament Of Mary, above all it's a good concept, how often has Mary's reaction to the events which befell her son Jesus been placed under the microscope in literature? Personally, I can't think of any examples, so points for originality.

It is well crafted, the excellent turn of phrase and the quality of prose, beginning as Mary, post crucifixion lives in semi exile and captivity watched over by followers of her son, who seem more like oppressors than guardians. Jesus is gone and Mary looks back on various points along the road which led her there.

The central difficulty with the Testament Of Mary is how slight it is, surely there's more, a lot more to her testament than this extremely short summary, which ultimately covers Lazarus, the Wedding at Cana and The Passion, as events and very little else.

In comparison to the Red Tent in which the life of Dinah's mother and aunts before Dinah herself was born is covered in great detail, it just seemed to me that masses of amounts of material and scope about the young Mary, her family, her meeting Joseph, Jesus childhood and birth  which is not present would have been a great addition to this piece, and would have improved by way of there being a greater longevity of readership the ability for it to have a profound resonance with the reader.

Like so many other works of this sort, I'm thinking particularly of the Good Man Jesus and The Scoundrel Christ, emphasis is placed on the fact that the version of events presented to us via The Bible may not be what actually happened.   I am tired of this non-revelation as though it must be startling for readers to consider. Although it is interesting that Mary seems to see all Jesus followers as misfits and lunatics, and is scared that Jesus himself is out of control and manic.

My personal issue with the novel was the sourness of Mary as a character her internal dialogue is very vitriolic and the former followers of Jesus are anathema to her and she to them. You may say this is only to be expected the woman has lost her son to a cause she apparently does not care for, but the "Our Lady" I grew up with, the Mary of the "Hail Mary" does not feel like this woman (again I know this is part of the point) she does not seem to possess the air of peacefulness, or compassion or meditative air one would hope for.

Ultimately, a bitterness which proves depressing pervades the testimony despite its advanced literary qualities, which in the end did not endear me to the book 6.5/10

Book #94 The Red Tent by Anita Diamant

The Red Tent

The Red Tent by Anita Diamant is a novel which caught my eye in a bookshop many moons ago, listed in the back of my mind as a 'To Read' and never actually came to read it until roughly 12 years later, as a result of it slipping in and out of recall.

The novel is the story of Dinah, the only daughter born to the famous Jacob of many sons of the Bible (and the musical), his four wives, all apparently siblings and Dinah's entire life story from when her father met her mothers to her eventual death.

Though Dinah is a Biblical character, not much was known about her, apart from one main biblical story around which Diamant weaves the most dramatic section of narrative, so in general Diamant was free to build the picture of Dinah she chose.

It is beautifully done. In many ways The Red Tent is a very female very feminist novel, The Red Tent itself being the place the women retreated to from the general family camp whilst they bled at the new moon. There is a huge focus on sexual awakening, menstruation, womanhood and the entry into womanhood, and fertility in general. The story follows the Biblical emphasis on the woman providing her husbands legacy, providing him with sons, the joy of being able to do this and the heartbreak of being unable.

The book also looks at the secrets of women, their private conversations, feelings, superstitions and rituals, kept sacred from the men in the privacy of the Red Tent, and childbirth itself too, a private process of pain, fear and delight dealt with only by women.      

In many ways the barriers between men and women's lives are now broken down, and so it is interesting to see this separation of the two, the clear lines between the female world and the male, down to the stories the two genders pass on, the heritage they feel is worth telling. It is another time and in many ways another world.

The prose is very beautiful and I connected with it straight away and had read the book in hours, it was poetic and had a hypnotic quality, you really felt like you could picture the characters and their surroundings, the atmosphere was great.

Dinah's story is in many ways sad, reflecting the difficult lot of women at the time, the loss of which many, though of course not all, modern women can be thankful for,  but it is also somehow sad to see that this private culture and camaraderie between women, also broken with the passage of time.

I really enjoyed this book, and read it in one day within a seven hour period. When a book grabs you like this, and doesn't let go, you know it's quite special and this book is surely, particularly for women worth the read 9/10  

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.