I keep picking up books about religious characters. Not sure why, they just keep falling under my hand. Anyway, this one is a fictionalised version of what might have happened to a very ancient, frail and blind John the Apostle in the last few weeks of his life, and what lead him to dictate his Gospel.
John and a small group of his disciples have been exiled, by the Romans, to the Greek island of Patmos. It is winter and the group is sure that they are waiting only for the second coming of Christ. The word comes that their sentence of exile has been lifted and they set sail for Ephesus intending to begin again to preach and teach the words of Jesus of Nazareth. They find chaos, rival preachers with loud and persuasive messages and little stomach for their Christian message of poverty, love and gentleness.
Gradually, however, things begin to change and more disciples come to them. As John approaches death, his spirit remembers again the roads he travelled with Jesus and he is touched with the Spirit and filled with the love that has sustained him for a whole lifetime.
I read this story through to the end because I am a Bible student and a practising Christian, otherwise I might have given up. Most of it is thoroughly dark and depressing. Only at the end does the joy, the love, the hope shine through and illuminate what is, after all, the very heart of the Christian message.
However, in spite of the depressing nature of much of the story, Niall Williams language is beautiful. His prose flows like liquid rainbows and soars like swallows in a summer sky. Beautiful.
Tuesday, 11 September 2012
Fortune House by Kirsty Scott
Kirsty Scott is a Sunday Times Bestselling Author. Not bad for an author who has published only 2 previous novels. I should be so lucky. Anyway, this is a family saga set in present day Scotland. A family reunion of Great-Grandmother, Gran and Grandad and their 3 daughters with various grandchildren and spouses/partners either present or dropping in temporarily. Plus the unseen presence of Gran and Grandad's lost son, the daughter's brother, killed in his teens in a road accident many years before.
It's quite a gentle tale of quite an ordinary family but Christmas is notoriously a time when close proximity brings out long forgotten challenges in family life and that's exactly what happens here. What I particularly liked about this story, however, is that it didn't seek to solve everybody's problems in the last chapter. We don't get to see what happens to the teenager when he goes back to school after the holiday, or the straight talking Great-Grandmother who is quietly losing her marbles, or the daughter who can't tumble over the edge into commitment and would rather tumble into a bottle instead. They are human, and their stories continue after the book ends. And that's just as it should be. Wonderfully drawn portraits of people of all ages, crafted with love by an observant author who weaves a page turner out of ordinary events. Masterful.
Recommended if you like modern family stuff.
It's quite a gentle tale of quite an ordinary family but Christmas is notoriously a time when close proximity brings out long forgotten challenges in family life and that's exactly what happens here. What I particularly liked about this story, however, is that it didn't seek to solve everybody's problems in the last chapter. We don't get to see what happens to the teenager when he goes back to school after the holiday, or the straight talking Great-Grandmother who is quietly losing her marbles, or the daughter who can't tumble over the edge into commitment and would rather tumble into a bottle instead. They are human, and their stories continue after the book ends. And that's just as it should be. Wonderfully drawn portraits of people of all ages, crafted with love by an observant author who weaves a page turner out of ordinary events. Masterful.
Recommended if you like modern family stuff.
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