Having just read The Shack, I found myself intrigued by this new novel by the famed atheist author of The Golden Compass among other books. Pullman is known in some circles as the CS Lewis for atheists so I had rather high expectations. Unfortunately, I was largely disappointed. Pullman's integration of apocryphal and biblical sources is enjoyable, and the narrative provides a unique perspective on the paradoxes of Christianity. But Pullman all too often goes for shock value rather than an earnest examination, and the result is more bitter polemic than brilliant prose.
Pullman tells the story of Jesus Christ that any reader of the Bible is familiar with, but with an important twist. Jesus and Christ are two separate individuals, twins born to Mary. While their lives parallel each other in many ways, their motivations are different. Jesus, the eldest and "good one," is driven to bring the kingdom of God on Earth. He seeks to truly implement the kingdom peacefully, without compulsion, dramatic miracle, or man-made institutionalization. Christ, the "scoundrel" on the other hand, seeks the miraculous, the dramatic, and power on Earth. In doing so, he is led by a mysterious figure urging him to rewrite history for "truth's sake." Though Jesus gains the attention in life, it is Christ who rewrites history to his own perspective of truth.
Christianity promotes faith, yet miracles play an integral role in our history. The Bible talks of war and peace, the kingdom of heaven and the kingdom of God on Earth, revelation and individual action. These tensions are never resolved, nor (I would argue) are they supposed to be resolved. The genius and frustration of Christianity is it does not follow mortal norms. True, Christianity has been abused by many churches and individuals over the years. But a poor fake does not mean the original is bad.
The themes in Pullman's books are quickly recognizable to anyone who has read "The Grand Inquisitor" in The Brothers Karamazov. Unfortunately, Pullman is not a Dostoevsky. The ideas are tenuous and poorly developed; there is also an excessive amount of cynicism and bitterness between the lines. The book is a quick read at least, and the extensive recognizable passages taken directly from the Bible and Apocrypha further speed the reading along. I guess C.S. Lewis still has no peer.
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