Customer Reviews

John: A Novel

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4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(1)
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1 star:		(1)

 

 

This is the first book I've read by Niall Williams. He is an amazing writer. He plays with vocabulary and sentence structure and somehow (without being gimmicky) transports you back 2,000 years ago, on the island of Patmos, living day by day, in faith, beside the apostle John. You live humbly and expectantly awaiting the return of Christ. Heresies arise. John gets old. I don't want to give anything away, but it is an amazing, literary book that goes to your heart. I finished it a week ago and am still thinking about it. It's a bit of a slow read, but it builds wonderfully. I think non-Christians won't "get" it...but any person of faith, who understands the power of the word of God will love this book.

--Steve Slesinger, Melbourne, FL

Mr. William's writing is beautiful. I was swept into the minds of John and his followers. His writing flows from word to word, sentance to sentance. Syntax and context work together flawlessly. No need to re-read sentances or paragraphs to understand. A joy to read.
The story moves along between the characters and touches the heart deeply. John's faith, his humanity, his struggles and triumphs. The questions of faith we all struggle with. The book left me with images that I recall in my everyday life to transport me to a life of faith; longing to serve and also to be home, truly home.
A satisfied smile as I closed the book.

It was a depressing read. I kept thinking there would be relief. But none came. The conclusion was unsatisfactory, and there were unfinished or poorly developed characters (Kester and Papias, even John). I expected so much more.

After a slow start, this book picks up tempo and carries the reader along to a beautiful finish. I finished this book weeks ago, but I'm still thinking about it. I had never thought about the fact that there were lots of "other Messias" competing for attention at that time in history. I have bought and sent extra copies to my mother and a good friend of mine. This is a book I will probably read again sometime in the future.

There is some scholarly dispute about the traditional view that John the Apostle and Beloved Disciple was also John the Evangelist, John the Epistle writer, John the author of the Book of Revelations and John the Presbyter. Williams tells us at the beginning that he has based this novel on the traditional version.

While there are some fine descriptive passages - particularly about the forces of nature and also about diseases - the style will not appeal to everyone: many one-line paragraphs, one-word sentences.

We meet John some years after he had been exiled during the persecutions of the Christians by the Emperor Domitian in around 91 AD to the bleak and storm-lashed island of Patmos. There, having been stricken blind by a vision, he had dictated the Book of Revelations to one Prochorus. Now very old, frail and blind, he is the revered leader of a number of fellow exiles who had never known Jesus personally and for whom he is the only living link with him. He has told them to expect the return of Jesus. They have waited for so long for this event that some of them are beginning to lose faith in John, and even in the divinity of Christ. It does not help that John has become uncommunicative and at times imperious. He had taught them the power of prayer, but their prayers to save sick people from death are not answered, and even John himself is shaken by this. One Matthias (I think Williams has invented him), the unscrupulous ringleader of the sceptics, not only develops arguments against Christ's divinity, but also manufactures `miracles' of his own to show that God is working through him, to consolidate his hold over the others and to challenge John's leadership. He leads a secession of more than half of John's followers, most of the younger men among them. (Personally, I think it is a pity that Williams has in this crude way equated the protagonist of Doubt with Evil, so that the story becomes one of a battle between Good and Evil, and not, as it should be exclusively, one between Faith and Doubt, in which the case for Doubt is both more respectable and more powerful.) Of the younger men only one stays with John and continues to have faith in him and his teaching: he is Papias. (Papias would later become Bishop of Hierapolis. In a fragment of his writings he said that he had been a hearer of John the Presbyter.)

The Emperor Domitian dies. The state-organized persecution of Christians ends: they may return from their exile. The little band remaining around John believes that it is sign that God's kingdom is coming nearer, and they go with him to Ephesus, where John had lived before his banishment, to resume their mission. It is not easy: they have become used to living for years as an intimate community in their quiet seclusion, and they know that further ordeals lie ahead of them as they face the wider and bustling world once again. And Ephesus is dominated by the Temple of Artemis, and all manner of other cults flourish there. Matthias has preceded them there, has built up a cult following of his own, has won over some of those whom John had known to be true believers and who are now his enemies. The disciples, and even John himself, are shaken to see that what they believe to be their mission is met with so little response. But of course the book of this religious author cannot end in their despair or in their feeling that they have failed if in their lifetime they cannot convert the world and cannot see the return of Christ. They will die before that time, but the Word will live and endure.