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As A God Might Be
Proctor McCullough is 44 years old. When he decides to desert his comfortable, middle class life in London and build a church on a clifftop, nobody knows what to make of it; McCullough is not religious. Is it a midlife crisis? Has he gone mad? Is he a man who is suffering a spiritual crisis in a secular age, where identity is shaped by wealth and social media? Or has he really been chosen by God for a new revelation? McCullough finds himself torn between love for his family and group of local drifters who help him to build his church. When one of these drifters commits a shocking and devastating act to test his beliefs, McCullough finds himself pushed to the very limits of understanding and forgiveness. As a God Might Be is an epic novel in the tradition of Dostoevsky. In Proctor McCullough, Neil Griffiths has created a character struggling to cope with the grand issues of modern life - faith, family, and his responsibility to society.
599 pages, Paperback
First published October 26, 2017
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Displaying 1 - 17 of 17 reviews
March 29, 2018
I knew nothing about Neil Griffiths before hearing about his role in instigating the Republic of Consciousness Prize for Small Presses thanks to my Mookse friends. Some of us met him at the Goldsmiths Prize announcement event last September where he showed us this book. My eye was caught by some of the names on the cover quotes, from Rowan Williams to Mike McCormack and Joanna Kavenna.
This book is nothing if not ambitious -a brave attempt to transplant the theological seriousness of the likes of Dostoyevsky into a 21st century context. However as a convinced atheist I cannot be the ideal reader for this and in order to review it fairly I will have to restrain my "inner Dawkins".
The plot revolves around Proctor McCullough, who works as a consultant for the government modelling responses to terrorist atrocities. He has a spiritual vision of a church by a cliff top and resolves to build it, finding a site in the West Country, risking estrangement from his partner and young twins and attracting a motley band of young followers who help him to realise the project and provide various tests to his faith and his resolve. The two main parts are referred to as New Testament and Old Testament (in that order!), perhaps reflecting the nature of the challenges.
For all these reservations I was very impressed and found most of the book very readable, and if it fails to match Dostoyevsky or to convince me that my lack of faith is wrong, that is understandable.
This book is nothing if not ambitious -a brave attempt to transplant the theological seriousness of the likes of Dostoyevsky into a 21st century context. However as a convinced atheist I cannot be the ideal reader for this and in order to review it fairly I will have to restrain my "inner Dawkins".
The plot revolves around Proctor McCullough, who works as a consultant for the government modelling responses to terrorist atrocities. He has a spiritual vision of a church by a cliff top and resolves to build it, finding a site in the West Country, risking estrangement from his partner and young twins and attracting a motley band of young followers who help him to realise the project and provide various tests to his faith and his resolve. The two main parts are referred to as New Testament and Old Testament (in that order!), perhaps reflecting the nature of the challenges.
For all these reservations I was very impressed and found most of the book very readable, and if it fails to match Dostoyevsky or to convince me that my lack of faith is wrong, that is understandable.
June 15, 2018
(A shortened and revised version of this review appeared in the June 15, 2018 issue of the Church Times.)
Proctor McCullough isn’t a churchgoer. He’s not even particularly religious. Yet somehow he senses that God is calling him to build a chapel, with a little house beside it, on a cliff in the southwest of England. It’s a source of bewilderment for his partner, Holly, and their London friends. Is Mac mentally ill, or having a particularly acute midlife crisis? He’s handed off from a minister to a therapist to a neurologist, but no one knows what to make of him. This forty-four-year-old father of two, an otherwise entirely rational-seeming advisor to the government on disaster situations, won’t be deterred from his mission.
It’s important to get a sense of the way this character speaks:
Down at the project site, Mac acquires four young workers/disciples: Rebecca, Nathaniel, Terry and Rich. Rebecca is a sarcastic, voluptuous teenager who will be off to Cambridge in a few months. She perhaps represents vanity, temptation and judgment, while the other three are more difficult to slot into symbolic roles. Terry is a dreadlocked lager lout who takes care of a mother with early dementia; contrary to appearances, he’s also a thinker, and takes to carrying around a Bible along with a collection of other theological works. Nat and Rich are more sketch-like figures, just ciphers really, which became problematic for me later on.
With Mac we shuttle between the building site and his home in London for weeks at a time. The idea of incorporating Pascal’s mystical hexagon into the church design captivates him, and the costs – initially set at £100,000 – balloon. Meanwhile, his relationship with Holly is strained almost to the breaking point as they each turn to alternative confidants, and there’s a renegotiation process as they decide whether their actions have torn them apart for good.
Like Sarah Moss, Neil Griffiths realistically blends serious concepts with everyday domestic tasks: sure, there may be a God-ordained chapel to build, but Mac also has to do the shopping and get his six-year-old twins fed and in bed at a decent hour. If Mac is meant to be a Messiah figure here, he’s a deeply flawed one; he can even be insufferable, especially when delivering his monologues on religion. If you’re like me, you’ll occasionally get incensed with him –particularly when, at the midpoint, he concocts a Clintonian justification for his behavior.
All the same, the themes and central characters were strong enough to keep me powering through this 600-page novel of ideas. Mac’s violent encounters with God and with the nature of evil are compelling, and although some of the events of the last third push the boundaries of credibility, it’s worth sticking with it to see where Griffiths takes the plot. There’s no getting past the fact that this is a dense theological treatise, but overlaid on it is a very human story of incidental families and how love sustains us through the unbearable.
If I had to point to the novel’s forebears, I’d mention Hamlet, A.S. Byatt’s The Virgin in the Garden, Michael Arditti’s Easter, and even Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead. If you’ve read any Dostoevsky (I haven’t, yet) or Iris Murdoch, you’ll likely spot philosophical echoes. The title itself is from Wallace Stevens. It’s all unabashedly highbrow, and a greater than average familiarity with the Christian tradition is probably key. For the wary, I’d suggest not trying too hard to read metaphorical significance into character names or chapter and section titles – I’m sure those meanings are in there, but better to let the story carry you along rather than waste time trying to work it all out.
While reading this novel I was bitterly regretting the demise of Third Way magazine; it would have been a perfect place for me to engage with Griffiths’ envelope-pushing theology. I was also wishing I was still involved with Greenbelt Festival’s literature programming, as this would make a perfect Big Read. (Though however would we get people to read 600 pages?! In my experience of book clubs, it’s hard enough to get them to read 200.)
I’m grateful to Dodo Ink (“an independent UK publisher publishing daring and difficult fiction”) for stepping into the breach and taking a chance on a book that will divide Christians and the nonreligious alike, and to publicist Nicci Praça for the surprise copy that turned up on my doorstep. This turned out to be just my sort of book: big and brazen, a deep well of thought that will only give up its deeper meanings upon discussion and repeat readings.
Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.
Proctor McCullough isn’t a churchgoer. He’s not even particularly religious. Yet somehow he senses that God is calling him to build a chapel, with a little house beside it, on a cliff in the southwest of England. It’s a source of bewilderment for his partner, Holly, and their London friends. Is Mac mentally ill, or having a particularly acute midlife crisis? He’s handed off from a minister to a therapist to a neurologist, but no one knows what to make of him. This forty-four-year-old father of two, an otherwise entirely rational-seeming advisor to the government on disaster situations, won’t be deterred from his mission.
It’s important to get a sense of the way this character speaks:
I want a structure that will move people to contemplate something other than all the obvious stuff … to be confronted with a sense of something and only be able to define it as Other.
God is the transcendent Other for whom creation, what we know as life, is a gratuitous act of love, a dispossession of a portion of His infinite creativity given over to our thriving. It is a gift from His infinite excess. That we can know Him at all is because of the possibility of this excess within us, which we experience as love, art, great feats of the mind. Our bounty is Him.
Down at the project site, Mac acquires four young workers/disciples: Rebecca, Nathaniel, Terry and Rich. Rebecca is a sarcastic, voluptuous teenager who will be off to Cambridge in a few months. She perhaps represents vanity, temptation and judgment, while the other three are more difficult to slot into symbolic roles. Terry is a dreadlocked lager lout who takes care of a mother with early dementia; contrary to appearances, he’s also a thinker, and takes to carrying around a Bible along with a collection of other theological works. Nat and Rich are more sketch-like figures, just ciphers really, which became problematic for me later on.
With Mac we shuttle between the building site and his home in London for weeks at a time. The idea of incorporating Pascal’s mystical hexagon into the church design captivates him, and the costs – initially set at £100,000 – balloon. Meanwhile, his relationship with Holly is strained almost to the breaking point as they each turn to alternative confidants, and there’s a renegotiation process as they decide whether their actions have torn them apart for good.
Like Sarah Moss, Neil Griffiths realistically blends serious concepts with everyday domestic tasks: sure, there may be a God-ordained chapel to build, but Mac also has to do the shopping and get his six-year-old twins fed and in bed at a decent hour. If Mac is meant to be a Messiah figure here, he’s a deeply flawed one; he can even be insufferable, especially when delivering his monologues on religion. If you’re like me, you’ll occasionally get incensed with him –particularly when, at the midpoint, he concocts a Clintonian justification for his behavior.
All the same, the themes and central characters were strong enough to keep me powering through this 600-page novel of ideas. Mac’s violent encounters with God and with the nature of evil are compelling, and although some of the events of the last third push the boundaries of credibility, it’s worth sticking with it to see where Griffiths takes the plot. There’s no getting past the fact that this is a dense theological treatise, but overlaid on it is a very human story of incidental families and how love sustains us through the unbearable.
If I had to point to the novel’s forebears, I’d mention Hamlet, A.S. Byatt’s The Virgin in the Garden, Michael Arditti’s Easter, and even Ayn Rand’s The Fountainhead. If you’ve read any Dostoevsky (I haven’t, yet) or Iris Murdoch, you’ll likely spot philosophical echoes. The title itself is from Wallace Stevens. It’s all unabashedly highbrow, and a greater than average familiarity with the Christian tradition is probably key. For the wary, I’d suggest not trying too hard to read metaphorical significance into character names or chapter and section titles – I’m sure those meanings are in there, but better to let the story carry you along rather than waste time trying to work it all out.
While reading this novel I was bitterly regretting the demise of Third Way magazine; it would have been a perfect place for me to engage with Griffiths’ envelope-pushing theology. I was also wishing I was still involved with Greenbelt Festival’s literature programming, as this would make a perfect Big Read. (Though however would we get people to read 600 pages?! In my experience of book clubs, it’s hard enough to get them to read 200.)
I’m grateful to Dodo Ink (“an independent UK publisher publishing daring and difficult fiction”) for stepping into the breach and taking a chance on a book that will divide Christians and the nonreligious alike, and to publicist Nicci Praça for the surprise copy that turned up on my doorstep. This turned out to be just my sort of book: big and brazen, a deep well of thought that will only give up its deeper meanings upon discussion and repeat readings.
Originally published on my blog, Bookish Beck.
January 21, 2023
Before I start, a word on pronouns. I've used 'He' and 'Him' for God. 'It' didn't feel right, and if I'd used 'She' you'd be distracted by that choice. What can I say ... the whole enterprise is intrinsically problematic in terms of language.
...
'This is what I think. Or what I thought. Something.' He used his finger beneath the words to make sure he read them without mistake.
'God is the transcendent Other for whom creation, what we know as life, is a gratuitous act of love, a dispensation of a portion of His infinite creativity given over to our thriving. It is a gift of His infinite excess. That we can know Him at all is because of the possibility of this excess within us, which we experience as love, art, great feats of the mind. Our bounty is Him.'
Neil Griffiths is the author of two previous novels – Betrayal in Naples, winner of the Authors’ Club Best First Novel, and Saving Caravaggio, short-listed for the Costa Prize. As a God Might Be is his most ambitious novel, powerful, highly personal but, at the same time, universal.
His other major contribution is to have founded the UK’s most exciting literary prize, the Republic of Consciousness Prize (http://www.republicofconsciousness.com/), which focuses on the cutting-edge fiction produced by small, independent, risk-taking, presses – a part crowd-funded prize currently raising funds for its second year here and well worthy of your support: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/re...
One such innovative publisher is Dodo Ink, who brought us As A God Might Be, the sort of novel one can imagine causing issues for more conservative conventional presses. Their mission statement:
For, despite Goethe’s admonition, in practice the subject to religious faith is all too seldom tackled by modern literature, particularly from a position of other than caricature, novels such as Arditti’s own and Marilynne Robinson’s quite brilliant Gilead trilogy among the honourable exceptions.
The most obvious, and acknowledged, influences on As A God Might Be are Dostoevsky and then Wallace Stevens - from whose Sunday Morning the book takes its title (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poet...).
In this novel, Proctor McCullogh (‘Mac’ to his friends and family) is 44 years old, living a relatively affluent and highly cultured middle-class lifestyle in his spacious Victorian semi in Wandsworth, with his wife Holly, an asylum solicitor, and his non-identical 6 year-old twins, one on the autistic spectrum of behaviour. In one nice vignette Mac finds himself both cringing, and yet strangely proud given his humble origins, when his children argue at a dinner with friends as to who has the most mascarpone on their dessert.
He has a consulting business with his business partner Jim, their latest speciality as ‘atrociologists’, working, under the Official Secret Act, for the UK Government on how people might behave if a chemical or biological attack were to strike London, and the authorities needed to forcibly quarantine those impacted. Their findings – that this might cause a fundamental and radical existential reassessment of people’s whole view of society (an acceptance that a phase of human existence was close to passing) – cause consternation in senior ranks.
But as the novel opens Mac, previously an atheist, has undergone an existential crisis of his own – an epiphany, a direct physical sensation of God’s presence, which has led him to make the radical decision to build a physical church on a beautiful cliff on the Southwest coast.
He narrowed his eyes and looked at the horizon, a long soft line, an indeterminate divide that promised a place one might cross and vanish from the world. It had always seemed wrong to him that the world didn't have an edge, that there wasn't that final choice to leave in such a way. But, of course, the world did have an edge, and people were stepping off it every day.
To the west, the sun was resting on the hills, held up in its descent, as if waiting for its burning rim to slice its way back into the earth. Behind him the moon was present, a grey shield of patient, undemonstrative, quiet light. Whether or not he'd made a mistake in building this church - whether or not he was guilty of a terrible cliche - no one could fault him on the location.
He starts, with little idea of where he is heading, by simply gathering materials and preparing the plot but as he does so others join in:
After a week he was left with a group of regulars, all under twenty-five years old. He spoke with candour about himself. He lived in London, with his partner and their twins; his work, a kind of market research, was at present confidential. Other questions were asked. Where was his Bible? He responded that he had many, and that not all of them were the Bible. He further confused them with other responses to questions they believed only had two possible answers. He tried to explain himself more fully, with reference to medieval and modern theology, and they listened as best they could over the keening of the circular saw or the suddenness of split stone filling the air. If there was a strong breeze it was as if he were just mouthing the words. At times, when he couldn't hear what they were saying, he tried to provide answers to questions he had spent months asking himself.
This group of four young people, each troubled in their own way, constitute a second family to him, and his interaction with them runs through the novel.
It should be said that Mac’s faith is far from conventional organised religion– he’s a theist rather than a Christian (or a Buddhist or anything else). Back in London, at a middle-class dinner party with his friends, he is challenged:
’Do you actually believe in God or not?’
‘Jesus - you're supposed to be educated people. You should know that such a question is meaningless. Unless, God forbid, you think I am to answer in terms of a man in the sky with a grey beard, who is receptive to our requests for intercession, and makes judgments about our actions and what is to happen to us after - you know - we die.’
[I should perhaps declare my personal position here - while I don't believe in a "man in the sky with a grey beard", I do believe in a God that fulfils the requirements of the second part of that paragraph, and the Bible as his Word]
Instead Mac defines his tentative beliefs with the quote that opens my review.
His interactions with this group of friends – his male friends include a mathematical scientist who helps design the Pascal’s Hexagon that constitutes the main focal point of the church, a QC (something of a cad) and an artist – and their interaction in turn with the young people helping with his church form a second strand of the novel. This part was reminiscent (perhaps deliberately) of an Iris Murdoch novel, with almost every character having either slept, or wishing to sleep, with everyone else of the opposite gender.
Which is all the excuse I need to insert Malcolm Bradbury’s pastiche of Murdoch’s rather overwrought style: "Lavinia had thrown down her lilies and now stood facing Alex. 'Alex,' she said with sudden passion, 'I have resigned from the presidency of the WI.' The words struck a sudden chill over him, and he knew that the shapeliness and order about him were about to be violated."
Mac’s wife Holly struggles to cope with not just Mac’s new faith, but his apparent abandoning of the family, mentally and physically, to spend much more time at the building site and dealing with the tensions between his young followers.
This struggle has echoes of Luke 14:26, one of Jesus’s more difficult statements (‘If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters – yes, even their own life – such a person cannot be my disciple.' NIV). Mac thinks when challenged on this by Holly:
There was no argument about what he'd done. Except she wasn't being abandoned, not indefinitely; it had never felt like that to him. He was sacrificing something on their relationship to make room for others. It might feel like an impoverishment to her now, but he believed by trying to do what he felt was right he would grow larger, and so that element of himself that would eventually be given back would be of a similar size to before.
In the opening quote, Mac described God’s infinite excess, but he later comes to understand that His giving to us nevertheless must somehow diminish Him:
We are unnecessary to Him. And yet he still created us. And in doing so he reduced Himself. For an act of creation to be a pure gift it must come with complete freedom. Our freedom takes from him - it must. And yet how can we even talk of a reduction in the infinite, the eternal? It doesn't make sense. But we must set that aside. Clearly we're well past what makes sense. Let's just say God will never run out of himself.
and also that God gave us not just part of His love, but also part of His power, which we have chosen to corrupt.
This is one sense a deeply theological novel, but it is far from didactic, instead searching and struggling, alongside the reader, for truth, and it wears its learning lightly, not requiring the reader to be a great expert in the topic. Although I did find myself doing some research when Mac casually comments that has a friend in Pelagius and that Molonism works for him, or when one of his young followers comments: "there is this geezer Reimarus."
Mac reads the bible, but regards it as just one source of revelation:
There are other things to read, to my mind of equal importance. There is no literal word of God. Or if there is, it's in other places as well, maybe more so. Read Dostoevsky, listen to late Beethoven, look at the paintings of Mark Rothko. Religion is an expression of something of which ownership is not possible.
And elsewhere:
I have read the Bible. But like Marcion, I'd trim it down a bit, then add in Shakespeare, Whitman, Dostoevsky to give it back the physical heft.
He isn’t a believer as such in the resurrection:
Could it be that this metaphor, among others in the New Testament, reveals a different kind of truth? In the sense that if you read it as a factual narrative to be rejected and as a metaphor to be accepted, you allow yourself a kind of cognitive dissonance- believing two opposing things at once - and that another deeper version of what is true can be reached, one that cannot be arrived at by making a straight choice. By which I mean that we do not abide by the law of the excluded middle, a necessary truth - something either/or, with nothing possible in between.
and later in his spiritual journey rejects it entirely – the point of the crucifixion, in his view, being Jesus’s failure.
Mac is also no fan of existing organised religions, regarding them as obscuring God. But it is important to say that this his is also not a wishy-washy vague religious faith – Mac experiences physical manifestations of God, painfully so in some instances, and confusingly for him when, in contrary to his view, he believes God directly intervenes to save his life, something he decides not to share with others:
God wasn't present in our lives in this way. He didn't meddle. Any defence of what had happened meant singling himself out. Because in this instance, God was present, God had meddled.
But there was another reason to keep this to himself, to make no proclamation. What if someone believed him, someone of genius? It only took one, and over time a brilliant edifice of thought would be created, a million words to make sense of the simplest of truths, a new thing created to be believed and obeyed. It wouldn't matter than the simple truth would have been lost the moment the first sentence was written ... perhaps the greatest of all human ironies is that man's most fundamental yearning, to make things intelligible to himself, pushes God into deeper obscurity ... perhaps the heavest irony of all is that His creative gift within us is what enables us to do this.
Instead his credo is summed up as:
"The solution is clear. We must ask for more love. Each one of us must turn to Him when we think we need it, and ask for just a bit more love.
He'd talked for ten minutes and was exhausted. He smiled; shrugged. Not much of an ending: turn to Him for just a little more love. But it would have to do. Why, after what he'd been through, add a rhetorical device to make it more persuasive, more convincing?"
And towards the novel ends, the seemingly peaceful community of young people is torn apart by a shocking act of violence, leading Mac to have to make a difficult choice as to where to direct his limited supplies of love, a choice with echoes of David’s actions in 2 Samuel 12.
It is always a mistake to confuse the main character of a novel with the author, but this feels a deeply personal novel and comments on the author’s blog suggest that Mac’s theological struggles do reflect his own (although at the book launch Griffiths pointed out that the only true parts of the book are the happy parts):
Another fascinating insight into his own views can be found in this discussion of Francis Spufford’s True Stories & Other Essays: http://review31.co.uk/essay/view/47/s...
Overall, it’s not a perfect novel – but then to aim for perfection would be a betrayal of its credo – but it is a very important and powerful one and challenging for atheists (at least those open to a discussion about faith) and believers alike.
...
'This is what I think. Or what I thought. Something.' He used his finger beneath the words to make sure he read them without mistake.
'God is the transcendent Other for whom creation, what we know as life, is a gratuitous act of love, a dispensation of a portion of His infinite creativity given over to our thriving. It is a gift of His infinite excess. That we can know Him at all is because of the possibility of this excess within us, which we experience as love, art, great feats of the mind. Our bounty is Him.'
Neil Griffiths is the author of two previous novels – Betrayal in Naples, winner of the Authors’ Club Best First Novel, and Saving Caravaggio, short-listed for the Costa Prize. As a God Might Be is his most ambitious novel, powerful, highly personal but, at the same time, universal.
His other major contribution is to have founded the UK’s most exciting literary prize, the Republic of Consciousness Prize (http://www.republicofconsciousness.com/), which focuses on the cutting-edge fiction produced by small, independent, risk-taking, presses – a part crowd-funded prize currently raising funds for its second year here and well worthy of your support: https://www.indiegogo.com/projects/re...
One such innovative publisher is Dodo Ink, who brought us As A God Might Be, the sort of novel one can imagine causing issues for more conservative conventional presses. Their mission statement:
Dodo Ink will publish original fiction, with a focus on risk-taking, imaginative novels. We are looking for books which don’t fall into easy marketing categories and don’t compromise their intelligence or style to fit in with trends. We are passionate readers, and we believe that there are many more who share our appetite for bold, original and ‘difficult’ fiction. We want to provide a home for great writing which isn’t being picked up by the mainstream.Goethe is cited as having said: The conflict of faith and scepticism remains the proper, the only, the deepest theme of the history of the world and mankind to which all others are subordinate, a quote which forms the epigraph to, inter alia, AC Grayling’s What Is Good?: The Search for the Best Way to Live and also to the seventh novel, Jubilate, of Michael Arditti, one of a number of people whose fulsome endorsements of Griffiths’ novel are fully deserved.
For, despite Goethe’s admonition, in practice the subject to religious faith is all too seldom tackled by modern literature, particularly from a position of other than caricature, novels such as Arditti’s own and Marilynne Robinson’s quite brilliant Gilead trilogy among the honourable exceptions.
The most obvious, and acknowledged, influences on As A God Might Be are Dostoevsky and then Wallace Stevens - from whose Sunday Morning the book takes its title (https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poet...).
In this novel, Proctor McCullogh (‘Mac’ to his friends and family) is 44 years old, living a relatively affluent and highly cultured middle-class lifestyle in his spacious Victorian semi in Wandsworth, with his wife Holly, an asylum solicitor, and his non-identical 6 year-old twins, one on the autistic spectrum of behaviour. In one nice vignette Mac finds himself both cringing, and yet strangely proud given his humble origins, when his children argue at a dinner with friends as to who has the most mascarpone on their dessert.
He has a consulting business with his business partner Jim, their latest speciality as ‘atrociologists’, working, under the Official Secret Act, for the UK Government on how people might behave if a chemical or biological attack were to strike London, and the authorities needed to forcibly quarantine those impacted. Their findings – that this might cause a fundamental and radical existential reassessment of people’s whole view of society (an acceptance that a phase of human existence was close to passing) – cause consternation in senior ranks.
But as the novel opens Mac, previously an atheist, has undergone an existential crisis of his own – an epiphany, a direct physical sensation of God’s presence, which has led him to make the radical decision to build a physical church on a beautiful cliff on the Southwest coast.
He narrowed his eyes and looked at the horizon, a long soft line, an indeterminate divide that promised a place one might cross and vanish from the world. It had always seemed wrong to him that the world didn't have an edge, that there wasn't that final choice to leave in such a way. But, of course, the world did have an edge, and people were stepping off it every day.
To the west, the sun was resting on the hills, held up in its descent, as if waiting for its burning rim to slice its way back into the earth. Behind him the moon was present, a grey shield of patient, undemonstrative, quiet light. Whether or not he'd made a mistake in building this church - whether or not he was guilty of a terrible cliche - no one could fault him on the location.
He starts, with little idea of where he is heading, by simply gathering materials and preparing the plot but as he does so others join in:
After a week he was left with a group of regulars, all under twenty-five years old. He spoke with candour about himself. He lived in London, with his partner and their twins; his work, a kind of market research, was at present confidential. Other questions were asked. Where was his Bible? He responded that he had many, and that not all of them were the Bible. He further confused them with other responses to questions they believed only had two possible answers. He tried to explain himself more fully, with reference to medieval and modern theology, and they listened as best they could over the keening of the circular saw or the suddenness of split stone filling the air. If there was a strong breeze it was as if he were just mouthing the words. At times, when he couldn't hear what they were saying, he tried to provide answers to questions he had spent months asking himself.
This group of four young people, each troubled in their own way, constitute a second family to him, and his interaction with them runs through the novel.
It should be said that Mac’s faith is far from conventional organised religion– he’s a theist rather than a Christian (or a Buddhist or anything else). Back in London, at a middle-class dinner party with his friends, he is challenged:
’Do you actually believe in God or not?’
‘Jesus - you're supposed to be educated people. You should know that such a question is meaningless. Unless, God forbid, you think I am to answer in terms of a man in the sky with a grey beard, who is receptive to our requests for intercession, and makes judgments about our actions and what is to happen to us after - you know - we die.’
[I should perhaps declare my personal position here - while I don't believe in a "man in the sky with a grey beard", I do believe in a God that fulfils the requirements of the second part of that paragraph, and the Bible as his Word]
Instead Mac defines his tentative beliefs with the quote that opens my review.
His interactions with this group of friends – his male friends include a mathematical scientist who helps design the Pascal’s Hexagon that constitutes the main focal point of the church, a QC (something of a cad) and an artist – and their interaction in turn with the young people helping with his church form a second strand of the novel. This part was reminiscent (perhaps deliberately) of an Iris Murdoch novel, with almost every character having either slept, or wishing to sleep, with everyone else of the opposite gender.
Which is all the excuse I need to insert Malcolm Bradbury’s pastiche of Murdoch’s rather overwrought style: "Lavinia had thrown down her lilies and now stood facing Alex. 'Alex,' she said with sudden passion, 'I have resigned from the presidency of the WI.' The words struck a sudden chill over him, and he knew that the shapeliness and order about him were about to be violated."
Mac’s wife Holly struggles to cope with not just Mac’s new faith, but his apparent abandoning of the family, mentally and physically, to spend much more time at the building site and dealing with the tensions between his young followers.
This struggle has echoes of Luke 14:26, one of Jesus’s more difficult statements (‘If anyone comes to me and does not hate father and mother, wife and children, brothers and sisters – yes, even their own life – such a person cannot be my disciple.' NIV). Mac thinks when challenged on this by Holly:
There was no argument about what he'd done. Except she wasn't being abandoned, not indefinitely; it had never felt like that to him. He was sacrificing something on their relationship to make room for others. It might feel like an impoverishment to her now, but he believed by trying to do what he felt was right he would grow larger, and so that element of himself that would eventually be given back would be of a similar size to before.
In the opening quote, Mac described God’s infinite excess, but he later comes to understand that His giving to us nevertheless must somehow diminish Him:
We are unnecessary to Him. And yet he still created us. And in doing so he reduced Himself. For an act of creation to be a pure gift it must come with complete freedom. Our freedom takes from him - it must. And yet how can we even talk of a reduction in the infinite, the eternal? It doesn't make sense. But we must set that aside. Clearly we're well past what makes sense. Let's just say God will never run out of himself.
and also that God gave us not just part of His love, but also part of His power, which we have chosen to corrupt.
This is one sense a deeply theological novel, but it is far from didactic, instead searching and struggling, alongside the reader, for truth, and it wears its learning lightly, not requiring the reader to be a great expert in the topic. Although I did find myself doing some research when Mac casually comments that has a friend in Pelagius and that Molonism works for him, or when one of his young followers comments: "there is this geezer Reimarus."
Mac reads the bible, but regards it as just one source of revelation:
There are other things to read, to my mind of equal importance. There is no literal word of God. Or if there is, it's in other places as well, maybe more so. Read Dostoevsky, listen to late Beethoven, look at the paintings of Mark Rothko. Religion is an expression of something of which ownership is not possible.
And elsewhere:
I have read the Bible. But like Marcion, I'd trim it down a bit, then add in Shakespeare, Whitman, Dostoevsky to give it back the physical heft.
He isn’t a believer as such in the resurrection:
Could it be that this metaphor, among others in the New Testament, reveals a different kind of truth? In the sense that if you read it as a factual narrative to be rejected and as a metaphor to be accepted, you allow yourself a kind of cognitive dissonance- believing two opposing things at once - and that another deeper version of what is true can be reached, one that cannot be arrived at by making a straight choice. By which I mean that we do not abide by the law of the excluded middle, a necessary truth - something either/or, with nothing possible in between.
and later in his spiritual journey rejects it entirely – the point of the crucifixion, in his view, being Jesus’s failure.
Mac is also no fan of existing organised religions, regarding them as obscuring God. But it is important to say that this his is also not a wishy-washy vague religious faith – Mac experiences physical manifestations of God, painfully so in some instances, and confusingly for him when, in contrary to his view, he believes God directly intervenes to save his life, something he decides not to share with others:
God wasn't present in our lives in this way. He didn't meddle. Any defence of what had happened meant singling himself out. Because in this instance, God was present, God had meddled.
But there was another reason to keep this to himself, to make no proclamation. What if someone believed him, someone of genius? It only took one, and over time a brilliant edifice of thought would be created, a million words to make sense of the simplest of truths, a new thing created to be believed and obeyed. It wouldn't matter than the simple truth would have been lost the moment the first sentence was written ... perhaps the greatest of all human ironies is that man's most fundamental yearning, to make things intelligible to himself, pushes God into deeper obscurity ... perhaps the heavest irony of all is that His creative gift within us is what enables us to do this.
Instead his credo is summed up as:
"The solution is clear. We must ask for more love. Each one of us must turn to Him when we think we need it, and ask for just a bit more love.
He'd talked for ten minutes and was exhausted. He smiled; shrugged. Not much of an ending: turn to Him for just a little more love. But it would have to do. Why, after what he'd been through, add a rhetorical device to make it more persuasive, more convincing?"
And towards the novel ends, the seemingly peaceful community of young people is torn apart by a shocking act of violence, leading Mac to have to make a difficult choice as to where to direct his limited supplies of love, a choice with echoes of David’s actions in 2 Samuel 12.
It is always a mistake to confuse the main character of a novel with the author, but this feels a deeply personal novel and comments on the author’s blog suggest that Mac’s theological struggles do reflect his own (although at the book launch Griffiths pointed out that the only true parts of the book are the happy parts):
Based on my assertion that I am no longer an atheist, my family of atheists think I’m a Christian. It seems that when faced with a theist most people try to make sense of what this might mean with a further categorisation. It can never stop at theism, a belief in God necessarily means normative religious belief. If one hasn’t explicitly converted to a religion outside one’s cultural inheritance, any belief in God must point to a conversion to the religion most proximate to one’s childhood. I call it the law of religious propinquity. Of course, it might be just that atheists default to religious doctrine because God on his own is ungraspable (and they may be right).Source: http://asagodmightbe.com/opinions/
Another fascinating insight into his own views can be found in this discussion of Francis Spufford’s True Stories & Other Essays: http://review31.co.uk/essay/view/47/s...
Overall, it’s not a perfect novel – but then to aim for perfection would be a betrayal of its credo – but it is a very important and powerful one and challenging for atheists (at least those open to a discussion about faith) and believers alike.
December 25, 2017
Neil Griffiths is a fierce advocate of the brilliant work being done by the small presses in the UK and Ireland, which in these days are at the forefront of risk taking in literary fiction. He recently founded the Republic of Consciousness Prize to focus on these presses and their risk-taking in publishing "hardcore literary fiction" with "gorgeous prose" - and has been the greatest influence on my own reading in the last 12 months by introducing me to this world.
This is his third novel fulfils all of the criteria of the prize he founded - published by the excellent Dodo Ink, risk-taking in its subject matter (in the UK’s liberal, secular dominated publishing industry. a serious engagement with Christianity is now as close to a taboo subject as any in literature), hard-core in its literary antecendents (the influences of each of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Wallace Stevens, N. T. Wright, Marilynne Robinson, Blaise Pascal and Rowan Williams are clear and speak of the decades of wide ranging and engaged thought that has gone into this book) and gorgeous in it prose (particularly when the book’s main protagonist tries to capture the transcendence of his interactions with God).
Overall a quite magnificent undertaking, almost the last book I read in 2017 and of the 170+ I read, certainly the most ambitious and most thought provoking.
One to be recommended to Christians of sufficiently mature faith and to atheists of sufficiently mature imagination.
This is his third novel fulfils all of the criteria of the prize he founded - published by the excellent Dodo Ink, risk-taking in its subject matter (in the UK’s liberal, secular dominated publishing industry. a serious engagement with Christianity is now as close to a taboo subject as any in literature), hard-core in its literary antecendents (the influences of each of Fyodor Dostoyevsky, Wallace Stevens, N. T. Wright, Marilynne Robinson, Blaise Pascal and Rowan Williams are clear and speak of the decades of wide ranging and engaged thought that has gone into this book) and gorgeous in it prose (particularly when the book’s main protagonist tries to capture the transcendence of his interactions with God).
Overall a quite magnificent undertaking, almost the last book I read in 2017 and of the 170+ I read, certainly the most ambitious and most thought provoking.
One to be recommended to Christians of sufficiently mature faith and to atheists of sufficiently mature imagination.
November 10, 2017
Richard Feynman once said “I would rather have questions that can’t be answered than answers that can’t be questioned”.
Proctor McCullough (“Mac”) is not a religious man but he has a conviction that God (for want of a better word - what he means by this will be explored in the book) has called him to build a church (with a little house next to it) on a cliff edge somewhere in the south-west of England.
Back in London, his family and his friends cannot understand it. This isn’t helped by the fact that Mac cannot answer their questions with anything even approaching a straightforward answer. Like Feynman, he has a lot of questions that cannot be answered and he does not consider any answer one that cannot be questioned. In his “real” job, McCullough works as a consultant advising clients on how people will react to atrocities in their midst. Just prior to reading this book, I, by coincidence, re-read DeLillo’s White Noise and McCullough’s work on atrocities would seem to fit right into DeLillo’s world of paranoia. Why would he give something like that up in order to pursue a dream or a vision, especially when he has no idea what will happen when he has completed the building work?
On the building site, a small group of workers comes together to help him. The story evolves around this group and Mac’s family back in London. I don’t want to discuss plot here, but it is safe to say that the tension and the drama ramp up to an explosive climax.
What is more worthwhile to discuss, at least for me, is the underlying theological discussion that is explored throughout the book.
I should at this point come clean. I have been a (Christian) church-goer nearly all my life, from being taken to church by my Mum to making my own decision to attend as a teenager. I have, for many of those years, been in positions of leadership within my local church. In my 40s, I became very disillusioned with the whole idea of church (as an organisation, not as a concept) and walked away for several years. During this time, books like Churchless Faith, A - Faith Journeys Beyond the Churches and The Openness of God were helpful for clarifying my thinking: although I was coming from a different direction to McCullough, I was asking a lot of the same questions. Like McCullough, I still don’t have all the answers.
At the start of the book Mac is infuriatingly ambiguous when answering questions:
Where was his Bible? He responded that he had many, and that not all were the Bible. He further confused them with other responses to questions they believed had only two possible answers.
And
Everything he said was partially true, but he knew it could be contested.
Both his London family and friends and his co-workers on site press him for his views and he will not, or cannot, give them a straightforward answer. Mac is working through some of his unanswerable questions. He is aware that some of his views would not be welcome in the organised religion of the established church.
On the Bible, for example:
‘There are other things to read, to my mind of equal importance. There is no literal word of God. Or if there is, it’s in other places as well, maybe more so. Read Dostoevsky, listen to late Beethoven, look at the paintings of Marc Rothko. Religion is an expression of something of which ownership is not possible.’
On God Himself:
Someone once said that the whole of the Bible, from the jealous and vengeful Yahweh to the benevolent, loving father, is the story of God learning how to be God.’
He is a strong believer that God can be found outside of established religion
Was it wrong to expect space and light to play its part in spiritual recovery?
It would be a spoiler to discuss more of Mac’s thinking and his sometimes controversial conclusions. However, as someone who has asked some of the same questions, it is my belief that people both with and without a religious faith would do well to read this book and think about the arguments it presents. It does not force a view on you, but it does raise questions that are worthwhile trying to answer.
McCullough’s spiritual wrestling is interwoven with the developing story of his relationship with his family and with the team working on site with him. It is good to see that spirituality and real life are not separated: Mac’s questioning happens in the context of him being a partner to Holly and father to their children. It doesn’t matter what spiritual issues you are struggling with, the kids still have to go to school, go to bed, be stopped from arguing etc.. There is a lovely “Overheard in Waitrose” moment where one of the children is heard to shout “He’s got more mascarpone than me!”.
I am avoiding writing about the plot. It’s not complicated, but I know I was disappointed that the blurb here on Goodreads says as much as it does. I think that is something best uncovered for yourself. At times, it feels like it might be about to go over the top in terms of drama, but the author makes sense of it all and the final denouement is very moving.
Overall, this is an intense story that also raises a number of interesting theological questions. It will not be to everyone’s taste, but I will be recommending it to many of my friends who are interested in exploring spiritual issues.
Proctor McCullough (“Mac”) is not a religious man but he has a conviction that God (for want of a better word - what he means by this will be explored in the book) has called him to build a church (with a little house next to it) on a cliff edge somewhere in the south-west of England.
Back in London, his family and his friends cannot understand it. This isn’t helped by the fact that Mac cannot answer their questions with anything even approaching a straightforward answer. Like Feynman, he has a lot of questions that cannot be answered and he does not consider any answer one that cannot be questioned. In his “real” job, McCullough works as a consultant advising clients on how people will react to atrocities in their midst. Just prior to reading this book, I, by coincidence, re-read DeLillo’s White Noise and McCullough’s work on atrocities would seem to fit right into DeLillo’s world of paranoia. Why would he give something like that up in order to pursue a dream or a vision, especially when he has no idea what will happen when he has completed the building work?
On the building site, a small group of workers comes together to help him. The story evolves around this group and Mac’s family back in London. I don’t want to discuss plot here, but it is safe to say that the tension and the drama ramp up to an explosive climax.
What is more worthwhile to discuss, at least for me, is the underlying theological discussion that is explored throughout the book.
I should at this point come clean. I have been a (Christian) church-goer nearly all my life, from being taken to church by my Mum to making my own decision to attend as a teenager. I have, for many of those years, been in positions of leadership within my local church. In my 40s, I became very disillusioned with the whole idea of church (as an organisation, not as a concept) and walked away for several years. During this time, books like Churchless Faith, A - Faith Journeys Beyond the Churches and The Openness of God were helpful for clarifying my thinking: although I was coming from a different direction to McCullough, I was asking a lot of the same questions. Like McCullough, I still don’t have all the answers.
At the start of the book Mac is infuriatingly ambiguous when answering questions:
Where was his Bible? He responded that he had many, and that not all were the Bible. He further confused them with other responses to questions they believed had only two possible answers.
And
Everything he said was partially true, but he knew it could be contested.
Both his London family and friends and his co-workers on site press him for his views and he will not, or cannot, give them a straightforward answer. Mac is working through some of his unanswerable questions. He is aware that some of his views would not be welcome in the organised religion of the established church.
On the Bible, for example:
‘There are other things to read, to my mind of equal importance. There is no literal word of God. Or if there is, it’s in other places as well, maybe more so. Read Dostoevsky, listen to late Beethoven, look at the paintings of Marc Rothko. Religion is an expression of something of which ownership is not possible.’
On God Himself:
Someone once said that the whole of the Bible, from the jealous and vengeful Yahweh to the benevolent, loving father, is the story of God learning how to be God.’
He is a strong believer that God can be found outside of established religion
Was it wrong to expect space and light to play its part in spiritual recovery?
It would be a spoiler to discuss more of Mac’s thinking and his sometimes controversial conclusions. However, as someone who has asked some of the same questions, it is my belief that people both with and without a religious faith would do well to read this book and think about the arguments it presents. It does not force a view on you, but it does raise questions that are worthwhile trying to answer.
McCullough’s spiritual wrestling is interwoven with the developing story of his relationship with his family and with the team working on site with him. It is good to see that spirituality and real life are not separated: Mac’s questioning happens in the context of him being a partner to Holly and father to their children. It doesn’t matter what spiritual issues you are struggling with, the kids still have to go to school, go to bed, be stopped from arguing etc.. There is a lovely “Overheard in Waitrose” moment where one of the children is heard to shout “He’s got more mascarpone than me!”.
I am avoiding writing about the plot. It’s not complicated, but I know I was disappointed that the blurb here on Goodreads says as much as it does. I think that is something best uncovered for yourself. At times, it feels like it might be about to go over the top in terms of drama, but the author makes sense of it all and the final denouement is very moving.
Overall, this is an intense story that also raises a number of interesting theological questions. It will not be to everyone’s taste, but I will be recommending it to many of my friends who are interested in exploring spiritual issues.
July 23, 2018
One of the endorsements on the book sleeve for As A God Might Be is from Rowan Williams, recently (until 2012) Archbishop of Canterbury. That’s quite an endorsement for a ‘religious’ novel; a novel addressing ideology; assessing God.
The book was originally going to be called “Family of Love”, and the late change introducing “God” into the title is a brave editorial decision. It’s impossible not to have pre conceived ideas about the book’s content.
Here, on Goodreads, three of the glowing (5 star) reviews are from people whose opinions I respect, and all of whom openly avow the importance of Christianity and religion in their lives.
Those voices, and that endorsement, strongly influence my response to reading this book.
Furthermore I respect the author, Neil Griffiths, for his work and activism championing works of literature from the fringe, the worlds of small, independent presses.
Why do the sections that feature the religious musings of Proctor McCullough, our central figure, leave me so unmoved, so unconvinced, so far from drawing new religious perspectives?
My University modern history tutor in political thought was Brian Redhead, a man who rediscovered religious faith after the tragic death of his son in a car crash. Redhead latterly became a confirmed member of the Church of England. One could identify some parallels in Brian’s search for meaning, and that of Proctor McCullough. I really wanted to feel, to understand, better the search for God, for Love, as conveyed in this book. It didn’t happen.
I actually think Neil Griffiths would have produced a better book if he had written about faith, theology and religion without the fictional McCullough as the charismatic pivot. Most of the religious messaging could be extracted from the storyline; the important statements are clearly telegraphed and felt a bit forced as part of our characters stories.
McCullough is a narcissist; a man who charms women and men, young and old…supposedly.
At the very start of the book, our charismatic leader reveals himself on encountering a young woman
“ He gave her work to do as if she were not special, not beautiful in a way that made his heart stop and his enterprise seem pointless” (18)
For the most part McCullough responds to situations and questions with “I don’t know”. I acknowledge that this may be significant, deeper than it appears at first glance, but it doesn’t help in the pages of a novel where the reader needs character development.
Neil Griffiths is on record citing his significant literary influences: Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, and Wittgenstein.
As I read As A God Might Be it was a different book (and one of my favourites) that came back to me; F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night. It concludes as the flawed hero, Dick Diver, raises his hand and blesses the beach with a papal cross, and then disappears into obscurity. A fitting end to a story in which charisma gives way to personal gratification and indulgence. I’m not sure that Proctor McCullough is any more worthy.
The book was originally going to be called “Family of Love”, and the late change introducing “God” into the title is a brave editorial decision. It’s impossible not to have pre conceived ideas about the book’s content.
Here, on Goodreads, three of the glowing (5 star) reviews are from people whose opinions I respect, and all of whom openly avow the importance of Christianity and religion in their lives.
Those voices, and that endorsement, strongly influence my response to reading this book.
Furthermore I respect the author, Neil Griffiths, for his work and activism championing works of literature from the fringe, the worlds of small, independent presses.
Why do the sections that feature the religious musings of Proctor McCullough, our central figure, leave me so unmoved, so unconvinced, so far from drawing new religious perspectives?
My University modern history tutor in political thought was Brian Redhead, a man who rediscovered religious faith after the tragic death of his son in a car crash. Redhead latterly became a confirmed member of the Church of England. One could identify some parallels in Brian’s search for meaning, and that of Proctor McCullough. I really wanted to feel, to understand, better the search for God, for Love, as conveyed in this book. It didn’t happen.
I actually think Neil Griffiths would have produced a better book if he had written about faith, theology and religion without the fictional McCullough as the charismatic pivot. Most of the religious messaging could be extracted from the storyline; the important statements are clearly telegraphed and felt a bit forced as part of our characters stories.
McCullough is a narcissist; a man who charms women and men, young and old…supposedly.
At the very start of the book, our charismatic leader reveals himself on encountering a young woman
“ He gave her work to do as if she were not special, not beautiful in a way that made his heart stop and his enterprise seem pointless” (18)
For the most part McCullough responds to situations and questions with “I don’t know”. I acknowledge that this may be significant, deeper than it appears at first glance, but it doesn’t help in the pages of a novel where the reader needs character development.
Neil Griffiths is on record citing his significant literary influences: Dostoevsky, Nietzsche, and Wittgenstein.
As I read As A God Might Be it was a different book (and one of my favourites) that came back to me; F. Scott Fitzgerald’s Tender is the Night. It concludes as the flawed hero, Dick Diver, raises his hand and blesses the beach with a papal cross, and then disappears into obscurity. A fitting end to a story in which charisma gives way to personal gratification and indulgence. I’m not sure that Proctor McCullough is any more worthy.
March 7, 2018
An idea that occurred to me while reading this is how much of our humanity exists on a spectrum and just how little black and white actually exists in reality. Our beliefs, morality, political views, sexuality and even tolerance are all on a spectrum whether we openly admit it to ourselves or not.
One of the themes in this book is certainly what is faith or theology today and does it still have a role in our lives. The way Griffiths addresses this complex issue is also what makes this book so intriguing and dense of a read. Nearly every page raises an interesting question that would surely spark lively discussions among people of all backgrounds. Here are 2 unexpected examples:
"It didn't matter that sometimes it only happened one-way -- music doesn't care about its effect on the listener."
"It was well documented that those who broke the rules during catastrophes had a greater chance of survival."
The story itself teeters between a well known one that's so familiar to us and wtf is going on? In short, a regular fellow randomly decides to build a church one day. He leaves his family to go and do so. Is he suddenly insane because of his unusual job or could something etherial have happened to him?
Spoiler alert: no supernatural miracles occur while he builds this church which adds to the intrigue and ensures this book doesn't teeter into 'preachy' territory. Granted, there are insightful, awesome monologues worthy of classical literature. It's wonderful to see these monologues here because this book reminds us to not let these become a lost art form in writing.
Griffiths' prose is a great mix of humorous, insightful & contemporary with an almost constant nod to classical literature. I'm glad to have read this super slowly. It's packed with discussion topics for book clubs of all kinds and issues that'll challenge almost everyone's views.
One of the themes in this book is certainly what is faith or theology today and does it still have a role in our lives. The way Griffiths addresses this complex issue is also what makes this book so intriguing and dense of a read. Nearly every page raises an interesting question that would surely spark lively discussions among people of all backgrounds. Here are 2 unexpected examples:
"It didn't matter that sometimes it only happened one-way -- music doesn't care about its effect on the listener."
"It was well documented that those who broke the rules during catastrophes had a greater chance of survival."
The story itself teeters between a well known one that's so familiar to us and wtf is going on? In short, a regular fellow randomly decides to build a church one day. He leaves his family to go and do so. Is he suddenly insane because of his unusual job or could something etherial have happened to him?
Spoiler alert: no supernatural miracles occur while he builds this church which adds to the intrigue and ensures this book doesn't teeter into 'preachy' territory. Granted, there are insightful, awesome monologues worthy of classical literature. It's wonderful to see these monologues here because this book reminds us to not let these become a lost art form in writing.
Griffiths' prose is a great mix of humorous, insightful & contemporary with an almost constant nod to classical literature. I'm glad to have read this super slowly. It's packed with discussion topics for book clubs of all kinds and issues that'll challenge almost everyone's views.
April 13, 2018
Proctor McCullough, a government employee researching postapocalyptic scenarios, has his midlife crisis. Instead of just sleeping around a little, he decides to build a church. Disappointingly, no hordes of zombies are beleaguering the church. The book is filled with the author's ruminations about God and Dostoyevsky and with lengthy discussions about the protagonists attempts to suppress his lust. My recommendation: Read Dostoyevsky instead. But don't write about it.
August 12, 2018
This had to be the most weirdest, complicated and yet compelling book I've ever read. I picked it up and didn't want to put it back down again even though I had no idea really why I was still reading it at times!
February 28, 2018
Most proud character I have ever come across in a novel. Women who are nothing but objects of desire. The way the characters reacted to Terry hacking their mates head off was utterly ridiculous and a way of Griffiths attempting to do Crime and Punishment. Pretentious quotations at the start of every chapter to show to us that Griffiths is a true intellectual.
Mac did my absolute head in...and to add to that, dense pieces of narrative that led absolutely nowhere. I thought they may have made more of Lucien's character. He had something of the nihilist about him which could have drawn out more debate regarding modernity...
What else can I say. Oh yeah...we know Terry drinks you don't need to keep mentioning he's sipping a lager. It was a novel of convenient plot vehicles to give across a message.
I'm not even sure what Griffiths thinks about Christ. He doesn't believe in the resurrection but we should be good people because Jesus was good?
A waste of my time.
Mac did my absolute head in...and to add to that, dense pieces of narrative that led absolutely nowhere. I thought they may have made more of Lucien's character. He had something of the nihilist about him which could have drawn out more debate regarding modernity...
What else can I say. Oh yeah...we know Terry drinks you don't need to keep mentioning he's sipping a lager. It was a novel of convenient plot vehicles to give across a message.
I'm not even sure what Griffiths thinks about Christ. He doesn't believe in the resurrection but we should be good people because Jesus was good?
A waste of my time.
This entire review has been hidden because of spoilers.
April 19, 2018
What would you do if you sensed you were in contact with God? Proctor McCullough (Mac) builds a church on the south coast of England. And on sand (yes, sand). Not at all sure it would be my first reflex - but don’t be put off. This intense book is about the massive swerve in Mac’s life from that of a successful consultant to Government on how to deal with terrorist attacks (like a dirty bomb in central London) to church builder and theologian. When this sophisticated, agnostic Londoner starts to talk about God, all hell breaks out in the lives of his sceptical family and unpleasant friends. As a ‘slow accumulation of God’s presence was building up within him’ Mac becomes a magnet for a group of local youths who help him build his church. Exactly where this influence takes him (and them) as he drifts ever further from his partner and young twins in London is the thrust of the story. Neil Griffiths draws heavily on Dostoevsky, as well as the poet Wallace Stevens. Mac’s eventual encounter with God has mystical echoes of the Grand Inquisitor’s exchanges with Christ in The Brothers Karamazov, or Moses’s brush with God on Mount Sinai. For all that, this is not a religiose book. Mac has little time for established religion, something which makes his wish to build a church baffling. Rather, it is about the possibility of the transcendent reaching through the appearances of our world to overturn us. Although at times the plot drifts into the improbable (I don’t mean the God bit), this is a great book that takes us into new realms.
March 6, 2023
It says on the back cover "This is an epic novel, and Proctor McCullough is a complex and deeply human character struggling to cope with the grand issues of modern life." I would adjust that and say that he reckons with probably the whole of modern life and its grand elements, as well as less grand but necessary elements. And that includes: God, spiritual aptitude, being alive and existence, intelligence and intellectual thought, art, children, aging, power/control, husbands, wives, friends and family, and the kind of people you might see at Glastonbury and Glyndebourne and more. Reading it was like taking part part in a cricket shot where the ball is struck out of the middle of the middle of the bat for six, out of the stadium, but where the ball never falls in its usual arched trajectory back down to Earth! Keep reading, allow yourself some time. Reading this book was good living. And it is so smart, so thought-out and so thoughtful generally and personally. is there too much religious content? you may ask. Not a bit of it; but there is stuff that is about it and that challenges it! And this is an author that does not even shy away from asking how cruel we can be, to those unable and less able to fend for themselves. It may be a cliche to say so, but this seems like a significant important book.
March 11, 2018
Complex
This very long novel I chose based on a review in the Tablet. It’s a story of a man who builds a church and the people in his life. They include his partner and twin children, and a group of teenagers helping on the building. He gets into monologues about faith, love and Christianity which don’t always work in context and could have better been left for the reader to work out for themselves. That said, it was worth the effort.
This very long novel I chose based on a review in the Tablet. It’s a story of a man who builds a church and the people in his life. They include his partner and twin children, and a group of teenagers helping on the building. He gets into monologues about faith, love and Christianity which don’t always work in context and could have better been left for the reader to work out for themselves. That said, it was worth the effort.
December 21, 2017
As A God Might Be is a humdinger of a book which sucks you into the great swirling paradoxical world of what it is to be human. It is a long, complex and disturbing read – at times uplifting and at others exasperating, which is how life is.
Reviewed on The BookBlast® Diary 2017
Reviewed on The BookBlast® Diary 2017
January 30, 2018
I skipped a lot of this very long and very dense book. Maybe I wasn’t up to it intellectually. I feel it deserves more attention than I was prepared to give it.
Read
February 9, 2018i'm glad i read it but i need some time to process it...my first reaction is that females lack agency in this world and that the secular world described is foreign territory to me
April 7, 2018
Somewhat self-indulgent, especially towards the end, and I found myself skipping over the confused, overly-dense musings of the protagonist that were clearly the author's own thoughts as he tied himself in knots. Nevertheless, I enjoyed it. It was good to read something different, thoughtful, sufficiently angst-y but still readable. A modern Dostoyevsky is a generous description, but not far off.
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