The Testament of Mary

The Testament of Mary - Toibin
Audio performance by Meryl Streep
4 stars

This is a very sad story. It’s a very powerful piece of writing. It is a very moving, imagined, first person account of an aging Mary, mother of Jesus. (Although, If I remember correctly, neither Jesus or any of the disciples is mentioned by name.) This Mary of Nazareth is a fugitive, living in Ephesus under the protective custody of her ‘keepers’ who are presumably followers of her son. This novella records the private thoughts of a woman who is traumatized by the death of her son. She is haunted by her memories of that death. She is cynical about everything pertaining to her son’s ministry, his followers, and the events leading to his death. She show more understands that she is being used to further the message of his followers and that she will continue to be used after her death. This woman’s grief at her loss and her guilt at leaving her son before his final moments are more than heart wrenching. Along with that grief, she is testifying to her complete lack of power. She cannot testify to the truth of the story as she saw it. She knows her words will be distorted.

I thought this was a very interesting interpretation of a well known story. It would be thought provoking even without the excellent prose. It’s a plausible take on how events could be rewritten into a desired mythology. I knew it was not much more than a short story when I started it, but I’m still left with a wish for a more detailed account. Toibin imagined the testament that might of been given by a woman. There isn’t an actual historical record by any woman. It can only be imagined. show less

The Testament of Mary is an account of the death of Jesus from the point of view of the one who knew him best, his mother Mary.

Toibin's Mary is an aged woman preparing herself for the end of her life and seeking to clarify in her own mind the events surrounding her son's death. She recounts her son's inexorable slide into the clutches of his political enemies and gives us a grim eyewitness account of the crucifixion. Mary's account of the aftermath varies dramatically from the traditional account.

Toibin's novella is ridden with heresies that are subtly and gently delivered in a way that is absolutely believable, although the book will no doubt ruffle many feathers. It is however a succinct and beautiful account of a mother's special show more bonds to her child, and a very human portrayal of a person who tradition has presented as more of a semi-divine figure. show less

Toibin focuses on Mary instead of Jesus, but it's not a Mary invited to the secret teachings, but a stranger to her son and the rather dismal multitudes. She follows him from afar and indirectly through some of the highlights, like raising Lazarus. But there's something sickly and off with the miracles, Lazarus is back to life but not restored. Water turning to wine looks more like a magic trick of confusion. The masses are always there around him, shutting him off, demanding more. It's an interesting portrait of estrangement, and a gospel from the ground level (my mind turns to Brian stuck at the back of the Sermon on the Mount struggling to hear the teachings). With Jesus having a target on his back, his followers and her turn into show more targets, and on the run Mary doesn't get to fulfill the traditional roles, only dream about them. The circle of disciples and early leaders are painted more as conniving people concocting the right stories that they promise will change the world, but none of it interests her, she denies their tales, the miracles, certainly a virgin birth, and is found praying to an altar of Artemis bookending the story and cementing it as something blasphemous, but more interesting for it.
If there's a flaw here it's the emptiness of her husband gone, along with his perspective, as well as the absent brothers, then again with such a short book focusing on her story makes sense.

Alternatives: I'm starting to have read quite a collection of these 'alternate gospels'. The Gospel According to Jesus Christ, for a nobel prize winner this is a pretty sophomoric sarcastic take on Jesus.
The Gospel According to the Son, Mailer sticks pretty close to the gospel but doesn't add much either.
The Man Born to Be King, another one that amounts to a retelling, but done so with fervor.
The Last Temptation of Christ, the best by far, managing to be both blasphemous and faithful. show less

I was not raised a Christian, but of course I know the conventional story of the New Testament. This shows a completely different perspective, of a mother robbed of her son, a woman almost broken with horror and despair. Her view of the disciples: misfits who cannot meet a woman's eyes. Her view of the rabble: sheep, following instructions.

Toibin's language is straightforward - you can hear the woman talking to you, scorning her keepers (I assume his disciples), refusing to give them the stories and details she cannot give them because they want what is not true. She is tough, practical, bitter, scoffing at the worth of the sacrifice she has witnessed.

Mary was once a devout Jew, loving the Sabbath, loving the prayers. Now living in show more Ephesus, if she follows any god, it is Artemis, goddess of childbirth (among other things). She waits, alone, silent, for her own death. show less

Gentle, stoical, visceral pain leaches from every page, into my fingers, till my very blood is charged with it.
The agony of wounds and guilt, yes, but the balm of forgiveness, too, I hope.

“I did not think that the cursed shadow of what had happened would ever lift… It pumped darkness… It was a heaviness in me that often became a weight which I could not carry.”

Image: Statue of weeping woman in a cemetery (Source)

Who is this for?

I expect this novel provokes the strongest reactions in those who can tick at least one of the following:
• A parent, especially a mother.
• Raised with New Testament stories.
• Lost a loved-one prematurely, especially a child.
• Burdened with guilt and "what if?" about a situation that ended, or show more looks as if it will end, badly.

The devout may find it too heretical.
Militant atheists and followers of other faiths may find this too steeped in the New Testament.
I read it as neither.
I read it as a mother, sharing the agonies of another mother: grief, pain, and guilt to a degree I hope I will never have to face.

Mary looks back

Mary, mother of Jesus, is looking back at the life and death of her beloved son.
She remembers how her beautiful, thoughtful child was transformed and lost to her, lost to life.
The first, innocuous loss, was at the temple, when he was twelve, staying behind in his “Father’s house”.
In later years, she lost him to delusions and dodgy friends that turned him into a dangerous demagogue.
Ultimately she lost him to a gruesome and humiliating death that left her vulnerable to shadowy principalities and powers.

She examines his faults, questions his miracles, and agonises over what she could have done differently: how she might have saved the life of the one she gave life to, how she might have saved the Saviour of mankind.
Her greatest pain is that there was nothing.
Nothing she could have done to save him.
And now all she has are memories.
Memories which hurt as much as they heal.
Memories which are milked and curdled by protective predators with a new religion to start.
She looks back for solace, to the virginal ancient goddess Artemis, even as she looks ahead, in answer to the whispered call of death.

What use a mother who cannot help her child at their time of greatest need?

I weep for the times when I have failed my own child, and humbly seek forgiveness - not from God, but from the flesh of my flesh, my beloved, precious child.

I first read and reviewed this book in 2016, when I was worried about my 22-year old child. It hit hard. I updated it on 1 January 2019, when I was able to relax a great deal about that. My child was happy, healthy, and beginning to thrive again: working productively and enjoyably, and planning the future.

But that joy and relief coincided with the shock and grief of my father unexpectedly ending his life. And then a loved one said how cathartic they'd found this book when they were in a deep depression a few years ago. So I turned to this review, and read it with generations reversed:

What use a child who cannot help their parent at their time of greatest need?

So I wept for the times when I failed my own father, and would humbly seek his forgiveness, were it not too late.

A few years on, I merely weep for all my many failings.

Quotes

• “It would not be long before all the life in me, the little left, would go, as a flame goes out on a mild day, easily, needing only the smallest hint of wind, a sudden flicker and then out, gone, as though it had never been alight.”

• “Their brother grew easily towards death in the same way as a source for a river, hidden under the earth, begins flowing and carries water across a plain to the sea. They would have done anything to divert the stream, make it meander on the plain and dry up under the weight of the sun… his last breath, when he was fully part of the waves of the sea, an invisible aspect of their rhythm.”

• “Moving as though his spirit was still full with the thunderous novelty of its own great death, like a pitcher of sweet water, filled to the brim, heavy with itself.”

• “The wildness that was in the very air… this great disturbance in the world made its way like creeping mist or dampness into the two or three rooms I inhabit.”

• “What was to occur weighed on me. At times, however, I forgot about it, I let my mind linger over anything at all only to find that what I was moving towards was waiting to spring as a frightened animal will spring… And then it came more slowly, more insidiously. It entered my consciousness, it edged its way into me as something poisonous will crawl along the ground.”

• “Now that the days are shorter and the nights are cold… There is a richness in the light. It is as if, in becoming scarce… it lets loose something more intense, something that is filled with a shivering clarity. And then, when it begins to fade, it seems to leave raked shadows on everything. And during that hour, the hour of ambiguous light, I feel safe to slip out and breathe the dense air when colours are fading and the sky seems to be pulling them in, calling them home.”

See also

• The painful memories this novella stirred in me were stirred again by Claire Oshetsky's brilliant, raw, and disturbing novel, Chouette, which I reviewed HERE.

• Doris Lessing's The Fifth Child was partial inspiration for Chouette, and overlaps with Tóibín's themes. See my review HERE.

• I was surprised to be reminded of this novella by a story in Daisy Johnson's Fen, which is a collection of mythic, mystical short stories, focused on young women, and set in the Fens of contemporary England. See my review HERE.

• Vladimir Nabokov's short story, Symbols and Signs, features parents struggling to cope with an adult child's mental health issues. See my review HERE. show less

Beautiful and thought-provoking depiction of Mary's experience as the mother of Christ. Emphasis on mother, with emotion-filled, tender memories of giving birth, breastfeeding, and raising a little son who becomes unreachable in his adulthood. Don't read it if you can't bear to have your ideas of saintly Mary cracked wide open. Mary here is a flesh-and-blood woman, not a saint.

⭐⭐⭐⭐¼ s - A perspective I never knew I needed
I'm not Christian, but I know the story—or thought I did. Jesus is always the main character, and Mary? She's just... there. An icon. A symbol. I'd honestly never really known her as a person before this book.
Tóibín completely alters that. This isn't a biblical retelling—it's a brutally human one. Mary here isn't serene or accepting. She's a mother who watched her son get tortured to death in public, and she's traumatized, angry, confused. She doesn't understand why it happened or why everyone around her keeps trying to make it mean something grand when to her it was just horror.
The crucifixion scene especially—it's visceral and awful in a way that made me realize I'd never show more actually considered what that would be like to witness as his mother. Not as a sacred moment, but as a real event happening to a real person you love.
At first, this felt like a 3-star read to me—quiet, literary, a bit distant. But the more I sat with it and thought about what Tóibín was doing, the more moving it became. He gives Mary back her humanity, her right to grieve and question and not be okay with any of it. It's a simple shift in perspective, but it transforms a story I thought I knew completely.

‘I was there,’ I said. ‘I fled before it was over but if you want
witnesses then I am one and I can tell you now, when you say that
he redeemed the world, I will say that it was not worth it. It was not
worth it.’ show less