The Testament of Mary by Colm Toibin

Toibin, Colm. The testament of Mary, Penguin books, Penguin books, London, 2013 (first published by Viking 2012), paperback, 104 pages

Rating: 4/10 

One exercise often conducted by the “Creative Writing” courses is to take a story and rewrite it with a changed POV (point of view). The perspective changes, and often we learn a new side of the story. In The Testament of Mary, Colm Toibin retells a Jesus Christ story from his mother’s point of view.

I am not a Christian. My exposure to biblical stories is mostly limited to the hundreds of paintings witnessed in the European museums. Frequent mention of the Booker nomination had revealed to me the subject matter of the book. Else, until the word ‘crucifixion’ appeared, I would have had no clue as to what this book was about. This raises an important question in ‘literary critical theory’. Shouldn’t a good book be self-standing rather than expecting the reader to know in detail the background story? Am I supposed to know the story of Jesus Christ (who by the way is never mentioned by his name in this book) and his mother before I could appreciate the book? It’s like a hypertext narrative, where by clicking the underlined words, you read the supporting stories external to the given book. (Mary is the narrator. And she is seen walking with Mary. And neither of them is Mary Magdalene I’ve read about. How confusing things can get for non-Christians).

Even in this small book of one hundred pages, I needed to read one third before it generated interest. From the time Lazarus is brought back to life, the book becomes readable. The language is fluent and modern.

It appears that Mary was very human, and judging by her thoughts, so was her son. She looks skeptically at the miracles attributed to her son. Her son, in contrast to the standard image I had in mind, is shown miserably carrying (rather than simply bearing) the heavy cross to which he is nailed.

However, Mary leaving her bleeding son, nails hammered through his wrists, in order to protect herself frustrated me. (It was my own safety I thought of, it was to protect myself. I was suddenly afraid, and more afraid now, sensing that the danger had edged towards me, than I had been all those hours- page 84). This was so incredible; it brought the narrative tumbling down. No mother, from whatever era, is likely to leave a son dying in enormous physical torment by making her own safety a priority. I lost sympathy for her character at this point. Her son is also shown to be completely ‘inhuman’ when he repeatedly says “what I have to do with thee?” (Page 47). Here is a mother pointing out to her son the dangers lying ahead, and the son ignores her and walks away from her while she is still talking to him. This is so unlike the Jesus I imagine.

You take biblical stories which may be fictional to start with. Then you fictionalize them further by distorting the characters, by making their behavior hard to believe. Not a sign of literary merit. Like anything to do with Sachin Tendulkar gets a half page coverage in Indian newspapers, anything written about key biblical figures can attract disproportionate interest. That’s what has happened with this book. It should not have been nominated for the Booker. Booker is given for the best original full length novel. The testament of Mary is a mere 30,000 word story, not even a novella. Rules are bent for religion. Booker Prize would get crucified if this book were to win it.

Verdict:

The good thing about the book is that it’s a two-hour read. If you like monologues and have been educated in schools run by Christian missionaries, the book may appeal to you. But borrow, rather than buy. And please don’t read it only because it’s shortlisted for Booker. It shouldn’t have been.

***

Ambler, Eric. A Coffin for Dimitrios (in the UK: The Mask of Dimitrios), Vintage Books, New York (first published in the USA by Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1939) paperback, 304 pages  

Rating: 6/10 

“A Frenchman named Chamfort, who should have known better, once said that chance was a nickname for Providence.” A Coffin for Dimitrios begins with this quote, and in the first few pages the author tells us how chance plays a predominant role in human affairs.

Charles Latimer, an English crime writer while holidaying in Istanbul meets a Turkish

Colonel, visits a morgue with him simply due to curiosity, sees a dead body- dead body of a notorious criminal named Dimitrios.  Again, merely out of a crime writer’s curiosity Mr Latimer begins to reconstruct the life of Dimitrios by travelling to places where he was known to have spent his life. Every succeeding city brings him into contact with more data, more people who had dealt with Dimitrios and more intrigue.

This suspense novel was described as a masterpiece by my cousin who had read it thirty years ago. The problem with that is the book is now older by thirty years and I am older by thirty years. Like portraits and still life have become outdated and replaced by abstract paintings, this novel first published in 1939 is old-fashioned. In an age where authors wrote with hand, and the words were processed exclusively by humans, this book might have been a masterpiece, not today. It has enough predictability to match an average Hollywood movie. Structurally, it is not well drafted. The voice is that of an omniscient narrator. But suddenly one chapter is a long letter. Then couple of chapters have only dialogue. In a novel, those chapters jar. From a writer’s viewpoint, the word count moves dramatically when writing dialogue, and slowly when writing descriptions. There are times and moods when writers resort to writing long dialogue to fill up pages. Good when necessary, but it wasn’t in this novel. Those chapters bring the overall level down.

With the British council library in Mumbai closed, my reading is getting skewed towards American writers. It was refreshing to read a good early twentieth century British writer.(Read preview here if you wish)

Verdict: If you accept the ageing of the book like you accept the ageing of black & white films, this book can be taken on a train or flight.

Steinback, John. Of Mice and Men, Penguin books, London, 2002 (first published in the USA by Covici, Friede, inc., 1937) paperback, 103 pages

Rating: 8/10 

In 2012, forty-two thousand books were published every day, a book every two seconds. That tells us the grand quantity of books we will never read. What is to be done? How to optimize the limited time available on this planet to find the best books? One solution is to look at the lists called 'the best one hundred books'. Of Mice and Men appears in most lists. I did not think its place in that list undeserving when I read it. 

It is a novella or rather a mid-size story that can be finished in one sitting. It is a story of two men, George and the simpleton Lenny, drifting from one ranch to another. They dream of buying a place they can call their own, a couple of acres with a few pigs, chicken and rabbit. After they come to work on a ranch in the fertile Salinas valley of California, their hopes begin to go awry. 

The book is full of dialogue, so much so that it could be performed as a play without writing another script. The book brings to life both the time and the geography. 

p.s. After reading the book, I thought one flew over the cuckoo’s nest had copied at least two key elements from this book.

Verdict: Possibly the quickest read if you wish to finish any "best 100 list". Presumably available free online. 

McEwan, Ian. Sweet tooth, Jonathan Cape , London, 2012. (Pages 320, paperback)

Rating: 3/10

Ian McEwan is capable of writing excellent books as shown by his Atonement, On Chesil Beach and Saturday. Sweet tooth, though, is a dull execution of what would normally be a readable premise.

You have a good-looking, decent but promiscuous (judging by her actions) young girl joining the British spy agency MI5. In the cold war days of the 70s, she is part of a project where the British intelligence would clandestinely sponsor writing talents so as to propagate through their words the goodness of capitalism and evils of communism.

We know how incompetent most spy agencies are in real world. But in this book MI5 comes across as a particularly daft one. The project of recruiting unknown writers and paying them handsomely, and to recruit special staff to select such writers sounds far-fetched, unconvincing and bizarre. McEwan simply uses the story to write a book about writing, and in many places goes autobiographical by including his own stories from the past. Sweet tooth like Arabian nights contains many stories. But unlike Arabian nights, they are not related to the book theme, nor are they readable. One exception: for mathematically minded readers, the Monty Hall paradox is used cleverly and is amusing.

To write a spy novel of three hundred pages where nothing really happens except a young woman becoming fond of older men, getting overwhelmed by them, and then sharing with the reader the unexciting writing of one of those men; is a wasted literary effort.

To be fair to McEwan, in the final fifty pages the quality picks up, the words become readable and acquire meaning, and some of the book’s defects get explained. Unfortunately, the reader must trudge through more than two hundred and fifty pages to reach this ending. I don’t think the modern reader is so patient.

Verdict: A failed experiment in metafiction. I hope this is simply an off-form book by Ian McEwan, rather than a permanent decline. He is among the best British writers.