The Good Man Jesus and The Scoundrel Christ by Philip Pullman

The Good Man Jesus and The Scoundrel Christ is Philip Pullman’s retelling of the story of the life of Jesus. He doesn’t actually change much in the story of Jesus’ life, but by the addition of a twin brother (Christ), from whose viewpoint his book is written, puts a different perspective on the story.

Jesus and Christ are very different from the moment of their birth. Jesus is outgoing and headstrong and often in trouble, whereas Christ is quiet and introverted and is often found getting the young Jesus out of trouble. Their differences run over into their theological beliefs and here they really are at odds. Christ believes in the ultimate power of an all encompassing church

“Groups of families worshipping together with a priest in every village and town, an association of local groups under the direction and guidance of a wise elder in the region, the regional elders all answering to the authority of one supreme director, a kind of regent of God on earth”

And Jesus’ reply to this is a pretty conclusive rebuke

“What you describe sounds like the work of Satan. God will bring about his kingdom in his own way, and when he chooses.”

Jesus’ life follows the path we all know so well from biblical stories, but with some clever twists on the miraculous events that define his life. The book is scattered with common stories from the bible, but their miraculous nature is called into question by Christ’s running commentary on these events. For Jesus’ life is chronicled by Christ, who after tempting him to turn stones to bread in the wilderness (sound familiar), observes Jesus’ preaching from a distance. Other familiar stories include the lame man who got up and walked, only to lie down again as soon as he realised he had lost his living, the steward persuaded to find the wine he had hidden at the wedding, and Jesus persuading the 5000 to share whatever food they had so everybody could eat, including his loaves and fishes!

Christ doesn’t write the events down exactly as they happen though. Jesus’ words are manipulated by Christ, and with the assistance of a mysterious stranger, whom Christ meets periodically to pass over is writings. Between them, these two concoct a plan to create the bigger truth from the actual history, with the ultimate aim of creating a church based around Jesus’ teachings, but bigger and better, representing the kingdom of god on earth.

“There is time, and there is what is beyond time. History belongs to time, but truth belongs to what is beyond time. In writing of things as they should have been, you are letting the truth into history. You are the word of God”

This book is re-telling a story, and it’s emphasis is on stories, and on how the way stories can be used to change and even control the way people think. As well as the events in Jesus’ life, many of his parables are included and the style of this book is very like a parable. I love the way this book spends a lot of time re-telling Jesus’ parables to express what the author believes to be Jesus’ message, and is in itself a parable on how stories should be read simply as stories, with the meaning to be drawn out, not taken as gospel truth. (I just felt the need to use that phrase!)

It is an interesting take on the story, with Jesus being used to create the very church he had already stated he despised. His compassion for the poor, weak and abused is emphasised heavily in this book, and organised religion takes a fairly substantial battering here. Using the knowledge of the abuse of power that has been perpetrated by the Christian church throughout history, Pullman puts prophetic words into Jesus’ mouth in a couple of long monologues towards the end of the book. The point is simple enough, reduced to its most basic, it would be institutionalised religion is bad and equates to a few people with power having excessive control over the many. At no point is faith or belief called into question though. And somehow, the end managed to have a twist, difficult for a story we all know the ending to. It was a good story, with a lot of things to think about, and definitely a novel take on the well documented idea that biblical stories really are just that, stories.

My Driver by Maggie Gee

My driver is the follow up to My Cleaner, which I loved when I read it. My cleaner was set in the UK, whereas My Driver picks up the same characters a few years later, but is set mainly in Uganda.

Mary Tendo is a Ugandan woman, who has worked for Vanessa Henman as a cleaner when she lived in London. They had a fairly turbulent relationship, and eventually Mary returns to Uganda, where she now lives with her boyfriend Charles, and their three year old daughter. She works in The Sheraton Hotel, which as the novel opens is preparing for writers conference, which numerous well known authors will be attending. Vanessa is preparing to leave for Uganda to attend this conference, and unknown to her, her ex-husband Trevor is also on his way out to Uganda, at Mary’s request, to build a well for the people in her village.

The book alternates between the experiences of all three of these people in Uganda, with each of them unaware that they are all present in Uganda at the same time. Obviously Mary is aware that Trevor is there, as she invited him, but neither of them know that Vanessa is in Uganda, and Vanessa is unaware of Trevor’s presence, and is unable to contact Mary, as the hotel she believed her to work at no longer exists. Adding to the intrigue of this are numerous scenes where they almost meet, are in the same place minutes after each other, or actually pass each other and fail to recognise each other. When they all do eventually meet, it is all very dramatic, if slightly far fetched, and pushes the boundaries of co-incidence just a little too far, but is also compulsively readable and incredibly moving.

There is also a thread running throughout of a wounded, half starved, child soldier running through this book. He is tormented by what he has seen and done, and although his identity has a huge significance upon the conclusion of the story, his presence is a stark reminder of the brutal conflict occurring in parts of Africa and the fear that Ugandan citizens are constantly living with. His identity is finally revealed at the conclusion, and his role in the bringing together of everybody was one of the elements I found just too co-incidental.

The main crux of the story revolves around these three characters, and their reactions to the experiences they have in Uganda. Vanessa faces some home truths about herself her status as a writer, and the consequences her rather uppity attitude to life has had on the people closest to her. And throughout her time in Uganda, we see both the publicly presented side of the country, as well as witnessing a slightly darker, poorer side of Africa, both through her eyes, and through Mary’s on her return to the village she grew up in.

What we do see in this novel is a shift in the characters mental attitudes, particularly that of the women. Vanessa is portrayed all the way through the previous book, and at the start of this one, as a self-righteous, self obsessed middle aged women with delusions of grandeur and an impression of her own superiority. Throughout this book, we see her gradually come to realise how life in Africa really is, and start to see the internal dilemmas she has with herself about how she has lived her life compared to how she should have lived it. Mary, however, just seems to get more extreme when she is in her own country. She was always feisty, and during her second stint in London stood up for what she wanted, but in her own country, she is downright obnoxious at times. I did like both women though, even if at times they were both incredible difficult to like!

There is also a definite shift in where my sympathies lay. In the previous novel it was Mary that appeared to be the more sympathetic character and the one that was a little hard done to at times. In this book Mary seemed to be much less likeable, and although Vanessa arrived with grand ideas, it didn’t take log for them to be stripped away by the harsh realities of life in Africa, and for her to come to some realisation of her luck and position in the world.

Although this book could quite easily be read without having read the previous novel, I think the aspect of reading this I enjoyed the most was see the character transformation and the subtle (and not so subtle) change in attitudes of the characters, over the period they have been apart, and their time in Uganda.

I did enjoy this book, although probably not quite as much as My Cleaner. It had the same mix of humour and seriousness as the previous one but I think the strong reliance on co-incidence and being in the right place at the right time, was just a little too much for me.

The Night Watch by Sarah Waters

Sarah Waters. I’ve only read two of her books so far, with this being the third. Both Fingersmith and The Little Stranger were very different from each other, and this one was different gain, despite being set in the same time period as The Little Stranger. The one crucial, stand out fact about The Night Watch is that is told backwards, with the focus of the narrative being on how the characters ended up in the situations they are in, rather than what is going to happen.

Starting in 1947, we are introduced to Vivien, Kaye, Duncan and Helen, when they are surrounded by a post war gloom, and their personal lives seem to be in a bit of a sad, depressing state. Vivien is in a totally unsatisfactory relationship with a married man, Kaye walks the streets all day then visits the pictures alone in the evenings, Helen is obsessively jealous in her relationship although not necessarily without reason, and Duncan is living a lonely life lodging with a much older man. All the characters seem to have secrets, and it’s these secrets that propel the story forwards because for the majority of the book, as one question gets answered, it only opens up another set of questions! For example, questions from the first few chapters are what exactly happened in Helens past, who is Viv’s boyfriend, what was Duncan’s transgression, who is Mr Mundy, why is Kay like she is and what is the significance of the ring? It’s difficult to say any more about the plot without giving anything away, but during this first part, we really find out nothing more than the eventual fates of the characters, and learn about a few of the interconnections between the characters. Because all these characters stories intertwine, whether it be through family relationships, place of residence, sexual relationships or chance meetings.

As we move on to the second and third parts of the story, most things are gradually revealed, and everything becomes clear. It is really a story that could only work this way round. The characters lives are fairly mundane really, apart from the odd dramatic incident, and obviously, the ever present threat of bombing in both the second and third parts of the novel. To read about these characters lives in chronological order would just be like reading a story about four people, who due to totally random circumstances, happen to cross paths. For me the interest came from the gradual reveal of secrets and mysteries.

Secrets and secrecy are a big part of this book. All the characters are keeping secrets from other people, and this secrecy continues right to the conclusion (or beginning, depending which way you look at it). It is the secrets that they keep from each other that keep the story going, and add the trademark twists that seem to be a staple of Sarah waters books. They are not big, shocking twists here, but nevertheless they are moments of ‘oh, now why didn’t I see that coming’ scattered throughout the story, with most not being totally resolved until the end.

It’s probably obvious from this that I enjoyed the structure of this, and I loved the secrecy involved both from the characters in the story, and as a natural consequence of that, from the reader. But it’s not the only thing that makes this book work. The setting within London, both during the blitz, and in the immediate post war years is written about with a terrific clarity. I said earlier that the characters themselves lead relatively mundane lives, which in their individual personal lives, they do, specifically in the first part, once the war has finished. But their melancholic gloom is set against the much bigger picture of war devastated London, both after and during the blitz. Throughout the course of this story we witness how the war has a direct impact on the lives of the characters, particularly the women, but not exclusively, as well as how living in 1940’s Britain had a serious impact on any less than normal relationships as, being a Sarah Waters book, some of these characters are homosexual. Trying to conduct any kind of homosexual relationship then was done behind closed doors. And there we come full circle, back to the secrets again. Secrets, lies and hidden truths!

The Battle of the Sun by Jeanette Winterson

When I read Tanglewreck last year, I was very impressed. But then I do like Jeanette Winterson’s writing anyway. That was her first foray into young adult literature and although The Battle of the Sun is not really a sequel, it does include some of the same characters, and follow some of the same themes. Knowledge of Tanglewreck would add something to the experience of reading this rather than not having knowledge taking anything away.

On the eve of his 12th birthday, in London 1601, Jack Snap is rushing home to receive the pet dog he has been promised as his present. Unfortunately, he never makes it home, and is kidnapped and transported through a waterless well to a house full of orphan boys (also kidnapped), known as the dark house. Overseen by a man known only as the Magus, the boys are forced to work on his alchemy projects, and are kept in line by a pair of creatures known as Wedge and Mistress Split, who are actually two halves of the same whole, born in a bottle, and were themselves created by the magus. The image of this pair hopping around the room on their single legs has to be read to be appreciated! And as an extra incentive, the boys are surrounded by previous captives, who having tried to escape, are then turned to stone as a punishment.

The Magus’ ultimate aim is to turn London into a city of gold, and he believes Jack to be the Radiant boy who is necessary to make the alchemy complete. Jack however, is not prepared to do his, and with the help of various fantastical characters, including a dragon in a moat, an imprisoned king sunk in a tank and a summoned knight, sets out to defeat the magus, and save London.

Simple enough story, but full of twists, and everybody trying to outwit each other. With the arrival of Silver, the heroine of Tanglewreck, Jack is whipped away to solve these problems, whilst getting a brief lesson in the problems of time travel, and the ability to exist in more than one place at once. Quantum physics makes a strong appearance in this book, just as it did in Tanglewreck, and again, it goes over my head, but it really doesn’t seem to matter! How do you go about processing the idea that The Dark House only exists in the Magus’s head and when he chooses to stop imagining it, it will collapse, even though the boys are still inside? Or that the Dragon is not in the moat, he is he moat, but also not the moat? The dragon in fact has some of the most interesting lines in this story, if a bit obtuse, but maybe that’s what makes them interesting.

“For whatever has stood in the world leaves behind an imprint, an echo, a scent, a spirit. What is destroyed is also reclaimed. What is lost waits to be found.”

I loved this book. It was a fast and relatively easy read, but a brilliant story, a really well created world, both the real life descriptions of London 1601, and the fantastical elements, with some very vivid characters. As well as the story, as well as the quantum physics thread, there is also a lot of understated humour, the prime example being Wedge trying any means possible to hatch a coconut, as he believes it is a magical egg, which perhaps in 17th century London, it would be! A good story, interesting ideas, and a very definite moral thread too, although I won’t go into that because it would ruin the conclusion. It was brilliant!

Chalcot Crescent by Fay Weldon

Suggested by my mum, I really wasn’t sure whether I would like this book, and it took me a while to actually get round to reading it. The first few lines intrigued me though,:-

“Two years after I was born, my mother had a miscarriage. Had she not, I would have grown up with a younger sister. This is the sister’s story, set in an alternate universe which closely mirrors our own.”

The alternate reality in question is a world very much like ours, set a few years in the future, but almost unrecognisable from our own mostly due to a complete economic and social breakdown caused by the financial crisis of 2009! The consumerist society is well and truly defunct; the days of plenty are over. The country is ruled by a National Utility Government (NUG), and supplies that we take for granted today are in short supply, such as coffee, tea, fresh meat, water and electricity. There is also an emphasis on growing your own vegetables, with the gardens of many terraces being converted to communal vegetable plots. The full picture of the state the country is in is drip fed to us through the course of the novel, as Frances relates her life story, mainly from her home in Chalcot Crescent.

In this world where everything has degenerated Frances starts telling us her story whilst she is sat on the stairs avoiding the bailiffs who are knocking on her door, to repossess her house and confiscate her property. Frances is an author of numerous successful novels, but in the current climate, the money for publishing has vanished so she is now living a subsistence level existence, along with virtually everybody else. Her grandson, Amos is sat with her, and he is determined to extricate her, or at least her property from this mess.

Frances herself is the main narrator, although not the main focus of this book. She is telling us the events, and they are obviously filtered through her perspective, but it is the stories of her family that are important. She tells us a lot about her past, her relationships both with men, and with her sister Fay. Frances is not altogether a very pleasant character, although unfalteringly honest about what she has done in her life. I was going to say, the mistakes she made, but she doesn’t see them as mistakes, she s quite straightforward about the things she did. Her acceptance of the new regime is a little odd though, as she seems to just want to let it be, when in the good times, she was a voracious campaigner, and witnessed all sorts of injustices.

As to whether I liked this book, I’m not sure. There was a story running through, mainly concerning Amos and her other grandchildren, and how involved they were in Redpeace and an attempt to overthrow NUG, and this as aspect of the book felt a bit flat for me. The story itself never seemed to kick off properly, and was all wrapped up very quickly, and I personally thought rather unsatisfactorily. However, I did enjoy reading about this imagined world where everything had gone so horribly wrong, and because it pulled so much from events that have happened recently or are happening now, it was an amusing satire on government and use of power. The NUG had slogans for everything, and food that cold not be grown was provided by the state, but in a nationalised form (as in WWII), such as national bread, coffee, and National Meat Loaf, marketed as suitable for vegetarians! The reason for this is bizarre, and a bit creepy but I won’t give that away.

I think the thing that kept me reading most though was the complete unreliability of Frances. She is telling this story, but at various points she can’t remember something that others say has happened. She also spends a lot of time imagining what may be happening if it outside her area of experience, and at one point she is unsure herself whether what she has just narrated has actually happened, or if her writers brain has imagined it. That was the most fascinating aspect of this book for me, especially as at the very end, it is made clear what we are actually reading is a second draft, after NUG approval, which throws the whole validity issue into disarray. And obviously, this is all imaginary anyway, as Frances didn’t exist in the first place, so is this Fay Weldon’s take on an alternative life for herself!

Blindness by Jose Saramago

Imagine a world in which everybody living in it had turned blind. It’s a pretty horrific thought, and in Blindness, Jose Saramago has created a pretty unpleasant scenario for what would happen to the world and humanity if this was to occur. Out of all the things that could happen to me, blindness is one of the things that frightens me most, and to be honest this book didn’t do much to quell those fears.

However, that does make it sound like I had a negative reaction to this book, which I didn’t at all. I thought it was fantastic. I loved virtually everything about it, the story, the ideas expressed, the slightly odd writing style, and most of all the way it made me think what I would do.

Told both by an omniscient narrator, and through dialogue between the characters, the story starts with one man going blind in his car at a set of traffic lights. Helped home by another man, he is petrified and quite understandably goes to see the doctor an eye specialist. Then we briefly follow the characters that come into contact with him, and any they in turn come into contact with, and gradually see them all turn blind, the way an epidemic generally tends to spread. Soon, the government is in panic mode and confines all the blind and those suspected of being contagious to a disused mental asylum, in a desperate attempt to stop the white blindness spreading. Everyone in the asylum ends up blind, except one solitary woman, the doctor’s wife, who pretended to be blind to be able to stay with her husband, and through whose eyes we see a lot of what conditions in the asylum are like.

Understandably, living conditions in the unit assigned for the blind are pretty grim, and organisation pretty poor too. Although promised supplies of essentials such as food and hygiene products, these very rarely arrive at the required frequency or in a substantial quantity, and the deliveries become scarcer as time goes on. There are also more and more blind people being assigned to the unit and more and more animosity from the army officials guarding them. As will happen in any place where large numbers of human beings are gathered with limited resources, a minority will attempt to hold power, and assert control, which for a while succeeds, but eventually leads to the ‘patients’ escape from the hospital, after some violence, and their comprehension of what the outside world has become with everybody blind.

I mentioned the writing style earlier and there is no doubting hat this book is written in a very odd style. Generally each chapter starts with the omniscient narrator setting the scene, and making moral comment on the events as they are unfolding, but then when the story switches to dialogue, virtually all punctuation disappears and it is never marked who is speaking to who, or when the speakers change. It shouldn’t work, but somehow it does. It seemed to transmit the sense of helplessness and blindness that the characters felt, and I think possibly the immense concentration that was required to read this book mirrored the concentration needed by the blind characters simply to converse with each other, or do anything vaguely resembling normality. Possibly I’m thinking too much here, but I don’t think this book would have had the effect it did if the writing was more conventional. Also none f the characters were ever identified by names. They are simply termed, the doctor, doctor’s wife, girl with dark glasses, the boy with the squint and so on. The most powerful effect of this book is the sense of reality it portrays and that this could so easily happen, which is only achieved through the immediacy of the writing style, and the lack of names, so it is almost impossible not to put yourselves in the story to some extent. It could be anyone, anywhere. It could be you!

All through the book, there is a sense that what we term humanity and civilisation is a pretty fragile concept, and in dire circumstances, it will disappear almost in a flash. The particular group of blind people that we follow retain a small amount of dignity, but how much of that is simply because they have the eyes of the doctor’s wife to see for them is open to debate. Events both inside and outside the asylum show a world that degenerates into barbarism alarmingly quickly and it is an unflinchingly depressing view of humanity that is portrayed. Whether things would degenerate this quickly simply through the loss of sight I wouldn’t like to speculate, but you would have to hope not. But I wouldn’t be so sure. This book certainly makes it clear how much we rely on being able to see to live any kind of reasonable life. Horrific, harrowing, depressing, but ultimately fantastic, brilliant and I loved it!

Best Bits

“I only mean that this is all we are good for, listening to someone reading us the story of a human mankind that existed before us, lets be glad of our good fortune at still having a pair of seeing eyes with us here, the last pair left, if they are extinguished one day, I don’t even want to think about it, then the thread that links us to that human mankind would be broken,”

Small Wars by Sadie Jones

Small Wars is a novel based Cyprus and England during the military emergency over there in the 1950’s. Focused around Hal, a Major in the British army, and Clara his wife, it is more a book about how war changes and affects people, and by extension, the effects it has on a marriage.

Clara and Hal are presented as a very solid, together couple, with both trying to do what is best for each other and their children. Clara knows and accepts the responsibilities of being an army wife, and Hal accepts his duty to provide for her, look after her and keep her as safe as possible. But more than this, they seem happy simply being together and in love. However separately defined their roles are, they always seem to find time to be together, this closeness is always apparent at the start of the novel, shown most effectively through their sharing of a brandy and cigarette after a meal. Hal and Clara have spent Hal’s first commission in Germany, where although Hal has done well and risen through the ranks, he has seen no real action, and is actually looking forward to his posting in Cyprus.

However, this seemingly blissful situation can’t continue, else obviously there would be no story! It is not long before the atrocities Hal witnesses in his day to day life stat to affect him, and as a consequence he starts to gradually withdraw from Clara. It is not long before the things Hal is dealing with start to affect the way he feels and how he sees himself fitting into his home life. Throughout the book Hal is torn between his family life, and his army career.

“His own self was overwhelming him and everything else was far distant”

“The room felt extraordinarily big to him, and very clean. He was too big for it, and not welcome”

There is a sense of what is right and wrong in military action running throughout this novel, and although it is seen through Hal’s eyes, it is also seen through the eyes of Lawrence Davis, a national service soldier, who works as interpreter. In this line of work, he is witness to some things he would rather not see, and spends a lot of time reconciling himself to what is acceptable. In a way, Hal’s struggle with himself is more personal and expressed through his actions, whereas Lawrence voices his feelings to himself (and the readers), making it clear in words what Hal is experiencing through his behaviour.

“Davis was surprised that his capacity for dread and disgust had not diminished. The boy was kept awake, standing, for hours at a time, and with each interrogation, seeing his deterioration, Davis jumped through the same hoops in the circus of his mental process. Steeped in shame, he condemned himself, but always, in the back of his mind, the thought: This is still within the realms of acceptable. If something really bad were to happen, I’d do something.”


“He clung to the notion that he had a limit, that his threshold lay somewhere, uncrossed and ready to save him, if only he were given the opportunity.”

Whether either Hal or Davis has a limit, and whether they are ever prepared to cross it, or what it would take to push them over the limit is a question to be answered as the novel continues. This theme continues throughout the book though. At times the British army seemed to be quite forceful and didactic towards the locals, and this is what both Hal and Lawrence are railing against, in their own different ways they both seem to have a dilemma between what they have been conditioned to believe, and what they actually believe to be right.

However, having said that this book is about Hal and Clara, and the strain that the war puts on their marriage, that is not what I actually liked best about this book. They go through some horrific things, but their personal story never really grabbed me that much. It all seemed to fall a bit flat where they were concerned. As well as the ideas mentioned above abut where your personal limit is, and what you can actually do about it, which were written about brilliantly in this book, what I actually liked best about this book was the horrific descriptions of warfare, both the guerrilla actions of the opposing side, and the reprehensible actions of the British army. There seems to be a despair throughout the book that this ‘war’ is not really about anything, it is not important and therefore the deaths and horrors involved are all pointless. It’s an interesting idea, in fact suggesting that if it was over territory it would all be ok, but it does a god job of showing how this feeling of pointlessness can affect even the most revered soldier.

“At least a battle-at least they would have the name of a battle to say he died in, not just a row of letters most of them didn’t understand, at least a country to fight against, or defend, not this small, dirty struggle. He took out his handkerchief and wiped his wet hands”