Customer Reviews

The Book Against God: A Novel

5 star:		(4)
4 star:		(9)
3 star:		(2)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Thomas Bunting suffers from self-pity, disorientation, and lethargy as he realizes he cannot worship the god of his parents, both Christians. Nor can he keep his wife's affections largely in part because his inner turmoil seeps too much into his married life. His wife would prefer him to be more upbeat, socially adroit, clean, and ambitious, but Thomas' religious struggle slowly and insidiously consumes him as he forges his own "gospel," a Book Against God, which articulates his reasons for being an unbeliever.

A good companion piece that covers someone losing his faith is Martin Gardner's The Flight of Peter Fromm.

An amazing bit of writing, remarkable for both its style and its intellectual honesty. Despite the fact that the fictional narrator is exceptionally unappealing, the author, James Wood, still manages to make us sense his despair, his inadequacy, and his worthiness as a fellow human being. This is an amazing feat. The theological and philosophical arguments are skillfully constructed and simultaneously wholly integral to the plot (and highly entertaining). Wood also seems to draw on a wealth of musical knowledge that is, in itself, quite dazzling and engrossing. A wonderful book that has made me feel all the better about life for having read it.

God is alive and well as portrayed in James Wood's The Book Against God. He is kept alive by the author's protagonist, Tom Bunting. Tom doesn't like to bathe, doesn't pay his bills on time, is frightened of fatherhood, and has trouble getting along with his wife. But most of all he is a non-believer in God and in Christian dogma. In fact he spends most of his time in the novel filling his notebooks with diatribes against The Almighty instead of working on a Ph.d he has started. Why hasn't God created a more perfect world, Tom asks, "a kingdom where the skies were safe, and the stormy wind was made mild, and mountains did not erupt and murder had been abolished, and violence was defunct...illness ...rare as the unicorn...no more death...a kingdom where we shall be given beauty for ashes, the oil of joy for mourning, the garment of praise for the spirit of heaviness."
There are many things the reader may not like about author Wood's protagonist, Tom Bunting, but his thoughts here strike a universal and idealistic cord that resonates well. In fact, author and literary critic Wood has created in Tom a very human and believable character. The Book Against God functions well on both the theological and human level. Not only Tom but other characters in the novel contain verisimilitude--particulary Tom's father, who is a minister in the English village where our hero grew up. Much of the novel is taken up with Tom's rebellion, not only against God, but also against the Christian beliefs of his parents. In addition, many of the villagers are presented in a warm, sympathetic, and idiosyncratic way by Mr. Wood.
If you like an novel that blends the ordinary and the profound (to say nothing of the controversial), you will find The Book Against God to be thought-provoking and entertaining.

This is a very funny book, with lots of Evelyn Waugh-type comedy, and English eccentrics and village life etc etc. And there's plenty to chew on intelectually. But being a big fan of Wood's passionate essays, I hoped for more from his first novel -- maybe something less conventional. Still, give the guy his due. He's a critic who can actually write (check out the first chapter, for instance).

The fulsome reactions to this brave attempt by a sensible critic of other's novels who tries to write his own fiction same make me wonder if some of Wood's readers have forgotten to distinguish form from content. True, this storyline has marvellously observed moments, for me especially in the observation of the narrator's friend Max's academic parents in their separate studies, waiting impatiently for human contacts to ebb so they can get back to their research.

But the arguments about atheism, agnosticism, and theology are scattershot and frankly rather disappointing, given their lack of originality. I expected more from this book, but instead of a sustained assault by a young thinker against too comfortable assumptions, instead I received a few hundred pages of a story that moved in fits and starts, with remarkably few interesting scenes, characters, or developments. I do admit that around the halfway point, the conversation between Tom and Colin does perk up the philosophical underpinnings that stay far too buried for most of the narrative. It barely earns two stars, only for attempts at insight that occasionally prove moving, if far too fleetingly. A glimpse of Wood's promise does emerge at the funeral of one of the main characters and the eulogy attempted by another (no plot spoilers) make for a finely tragicomic scene in the tradition of Waugh or Kingsley Amis.

But the whole musical realm within which Jane is shown takes up energy that would have better been spent on Tom's own musings, if they were to convince us at all. A few potshots at Kierkegaard's name and admittedly frustrating aphorisms do not make much of a case for his "book against God" project. Now, is this rather Wood's point? The open-ended denouement may support a rejection of Tom's ambitions.

If so, then these 250 pp. could have been better condensed and tightened into a fine novella. Wood gives you no real weight for his protagonist, who appears far too closely drawn on his own early experiences. This muddled semi-autobiographical portrait of a rebel academic shows only intermittent control of the fictional process. Without his previous reputation at the Guardian and New Republic, I wonder if this would have been published. Given the evidence of this debut, Wood's a better critic than creator of weighty fiction.

If I had read some of Wood's previous work, perhaps I would have some context for this book and be more forgiving, or at least more understanding. As it is, I picked it up simply because I'm an atheist and a quick scan showed the promise of an engaging story with an existentialist bent. That promise was not fulfilled.

The book starts and ends with the character at the same point in space and time. The middle is all backstory. There's no discernible character arc and no resolution whatsoever - which would lead some to quibble with the author's assertion that this book is "a novel." This book is a portrait of a rather unsympathetic character who reveals himself slowly but doesn't seem to change. Mostly, this book is a discussion on religious belief, hung on the sad scaffolding of a narrator who is both unreliable and ambivalent.

In addition, the book's tone swings wildly between realistic, down-to-earth dialogue and character depictions, and the most overwrought descriptions I have ever read. As regular as clockwork and usually in chunks, you get descriptions like this gem: "As the cows sighted us, they pricked a swaying wander over the sucking mud, came to the fence and snorted faint figures of steam. Their mooing noises buzzed deep down in their unemotional throats." Self-conscious passages like that managed to jerk me out of any tenous connection I might have had with the character and the ongoing story, such as it was.

On the whole, this book reads more like an author's idea and notes for a book. (That is certainly what the narrator would argue, but acknowledging a flaw doesn't make it less flawed.) I'm sure existentialism and narrative flow can be successfully married, to great effect. "The Book Against God" doesn't manage it.

The Book Against God serves as a modern novel written through the use of many old techniques. Instead of being consumed with flashy magical realism or strange postmodern techniques, Wood writes the (purposefully unreliably narrated) story of Thomas Bunting--and he does it well. The writing is spectacular, using nuanced Jamesian metaphor and descriptions to achieve mutable yet distictively believeable characters. Wood is truly an amazing writer, as his criticism shows. In his first novel, he succeeds in telling an interesting while sometimes disturbing story. Had he used a third person narration technique, it is possible the characters could have been even more vivid and complex. If you like a novel that bursts with packed prose, yet is a fun read, The Book Against God will suit your fancy.

For the past ten years (I'm 26) I've read something on the order of a novel a month. In that time, Wood's is the only one that has made me cry. When Bunting starts his final paragraph, I lost it and literally wept into my pillow.

I am Jewish, not religious. I have no gripes with Christianity, nor am I particularly well versed in the New Testament. Saint Peter denied Jesus three times, as does Thomas Bunting his father. Wood's religious-philosophical musings propel the narrative, but it's the relationship between a son and his earthly father that lies at the heart of Wood's and Bunting's so-called "BAG." A better twentieth century story of father and son you'd be hard pressed to find. (I realize this is from the 21st... it is, in my opinion, that good.)

Wood's criticism has a preternatural quality (how could someone so young be so well read?), and the Book Against God, while flawed and self-consciously limited, displays a profound understaning of literature, its roles, capabilities and power. I'm grateful he's made the move to fiction and look forward to future works.

At a slim 250+ pages, the eminent critic, James Wood, uses a fractured story line (reminiscent of Ford Maddox Ford's The Good Soldier) to convey a consistently entertaining old-fashioned book of manners and ideas revolving around the callow, atheist son, Thomas, and his wise believing father, Peter. This book has the feel of a mid-century Graham Greene or C. S. Lewis told from "the other side" of the faith line. Indeed, the narrator, Thomas, loves to invert the arguments of the church fathers and saints, just as this book feels like an inversion of Graham Greene's The End of the Affair. A book well worth reading.

They don't make 'em like this anymore. There'll be people who don't dig this kind of thing, but for anyone who likes Camus or Mann, or even George Eliot, this novel really delivers. It's funny, and genuinely intellectually stimulating. It helps to be interested in religious matters, but it's not essential. I picked it up for no better reason than the cover appealed, and I read the first chapter in the bookstore. I recommend it to all you crazies and subversives out there who THINK.