The Testament of Mary

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

"When you say that he redeemed the world, I will say that it was not worth it.", October 9, 2014

This review is from: The Testament of Mary: A Novel (Paperback)
There are a lot of issues that those familiar with the Scriptures could throw at this book. As Mary lives out the end of her days, exiled near Ephesus, tormented with her son's terrible end, and highly dubious as to his being the Son of God, it repeatedly occurred to me : what about the Annunciation? the miracle of the Virgin Birth?
But stop for a moment. Put your arguments on one side and consider that we don't really know anything about Mary's feelings or thoughts, and read this as a work of fiction - and an immensely powerful one it is.
The atmosphere of the crucifixion is show more stunningly drawn - the fear of being the next one arrested by the Romans if you get too close. The description of the raising of Lazarus too is vivid, if highly debatable. And Toibin's take on the weddding at Cana: 'I went to Cana not to celebrate the joining together with much clamour of two people..but to see if I could get my son home.'
Absolutely exquisite read. show less

This daring novella is a first person narrative by the Virgin Mary as she recounts events in her life and that of her son, culminating, of course, with the crucifixion. She is being interviewed by two visitors who want to record her testament for the narrative they are writing about her son.

She is not very co-operative since she knows they have a specific agenda: they want stories which will substantiate that Jesus was the son of God, and they become angry and impatient when what she says does not accord with their version of events. She resists their badgering, their “vast and insatiable . . . [and] earnest need for foolish anecdotes or sharp, simple patterns in the story” and refuses to be manipulated to say what they want to show more hear. She says, “I will do for them what I can, but no more than that. . . . I cannot say more than I say.” She has reason to suspect them when she discovers that a dream she shares of her son’s resurrection becomes recorded as fact.

Mary is not the paragon of endless patience, loving kindness and mercy central in Marian doctrine. She is a stubborn, intelligent (though uneducated), and independent woman. She dislikes her son’s followers, calling them “a group of misfits, who were only children . . . or men without fathers, or men who could not look a woman in the eye. . . . Not one . . . was normal.” She flees before her son actually expires because she is convinced she must do so in order to survive, and she admits, “I must let the words out, that despite the panic, despite the desperation, the shrieking, despite the fact that his heart and his flesh had come from my heart and my flesh, despite the pain I felt, a pain that has never lifted, and will go with me into the grave, despite all of this, the pain was his and not mine.” These are hardly the words we would expect to hear from someone considered by some to be the blessed mother of all mankind. Mary remains fiercely devoted to her deceased husband and finds comfort, not in a synagogue, but in the temple of Artemis.

Most significantly, she is skeptical of her son’s identification as the son of God. She sees her son as someone who fell in with the wrong crowd: “Gather together misfits . . . and you will get anything at all – fearlessness, ambition, anything – and before it dissolves or it grows, it will lead to what I saw and what I live with now.” She has a profound sense of loss and waste: she says that her son “could have done anything, . . . he had that capacity also, the one that is the rarest, he could have spent time alone with ease, he could look at a woman as though she were his equal, and he was grateful, good-mannered, intelligent.” She feels he was not genuine when he was preaching to his disciples; she says “his voice was false, and his tone all stilted.” She does, however, acknowledge that she did sense something extraordinary about him: “I saw a power fixed and truly itself, formed. I saw something that seemed to have no history and to have come from nowhere.”

There are people who would regard this book as blasphemy, but I see it as a humanization of Mary. She is a human mother who suffered unimaginably by seeing her son suffer in unimaginable ways. Speaking of the crucifixion, she says, “I had been made wild by what I saw and nothing has ever changed that. I have been unhinged by what I saw in daylight and no darkness will assuage that, or lessen what it did to me.” Who cannot sympathize with the portrayal of a lamenting mother who expresses grief at the sacrificing of her son by crying, “’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.’”

I highly recommend this book; it is beautifully written and challenges the reader to consider another view of a woman mentioned in both the Bible and the Quran. show less

Colm Toibin's a brave man. He's written a book about Jesus' mother in which she is hardly the pure, pious, porcelain saint man has turned her into. She's grieving. She's smart. She's frightened. She's bone-weary. She's angry. And she's being kept a virtual prisoner, thirty years after the crucifixion of her son, by two of his disciples.

Although a slim volume, it's quite a tour de force. Toibin burrows deep into the imagined mind of Mary in order to create an utterly accessible portrait of a woman trapped under the wheel of history. The language is beautiful; the perspective intense.

Toibin turns some things inside out, such as the popular idea that Mary knew her son was capital 'd' Divine before his birth. Here, Mary suspects her son show more is "out of his mind". She finds him frightening and distant. In most ways, Toibin is faithful to the Gospel stories, but because so little, really, is said about Mary, he uses these omissions to explore. For example, in this re-imagining Jesus' mother is too fearful for her own life to stay at the foot of the cross, and thirty years later she finds solace for the absurdity she judges his life to be in pagan gods.

One of the most intriguing sections for me was the one in which Lazarus is raised form the dead. Again, Toibin sticks close to the Gospel version of events, however, he takes it a bit further, with an Edgar Allen Poe "Monkey's Paw" twist. Lazarus does indeed come back from the dead, but whether that's a good idea or not is clearly open for debate, as is Jesus' motivations for raising him. The Lazarus who returns isn't quite the Lazarus who died: "Slowly, the figure dirtied with clay and covered in graveclothes wound around him began with great uncertainty to move … like some strange new creature jerking and wriggling towards life." And further on: "Lazarus, it was clear to me, was dying. If he had come back to life it was merely to say a last farewell to it. He recognised none of us, barely appeared able to lift the glass of water to his lips as he was handed small pieces of soaked bread by his sisters."

Disquieting? You bet. The disciples, too, bring with them a certain amount of dread. Mary's 'guardians' spy on her, keep her under watch, try and twist her to their will. Like shadows they flit around the corners of the narratives, urging Mary to tell stories about her son that prove he is more than a charismatic leader/healer. She's afraid of them, and she's right to be afraid; it's quite clear it will be easier for them to create the Jesus they want when she's dead.

There's no doubt this book will offend some folks, but that's a pity. What a glorious, earthy, REAL woman Toibin has created in this Mary. She's so much more than the bloodless virgin of myth. 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

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

The basics: The premise is somewhat audacious: years after the crucifixion, Mary lives alone. She recalls the last days of her son's life, including his death. Although the disciples keep her fed and provide housing, Mary does not share their belief that her son was the Son of God.

My thoughts: The writing is beautiful and haunting. Mary is such a cultural and religious icon, and Toibin rises to the challenge to imagine Mary and her inner workings in a different way. As a character, she's incredibly dynamic: "I no longer need tears and that should be a relief, but I do not seek relief, merely solitude and some grim satisfaction which comes from the certainty that I will not say anything that is not true." Mary feels emotionally tortured. show more She reacts the way we would expect a grieving mother to act: she mourns the loss of her son. Yet everyone around her celebrates his death. This contrast is even more vivid when Mary recalls the day of the crucifixion itself. Toibin does not shy away from the horrors of dying in that way. It's difficult to read because Toibin, through Mary and with his own hand, emphasize the humanity of Jesus.

Favorite passage: "Oh, eternal life!" I replied. "Oh, everyone in the world!" I looked at both of them, their eyes hooded and something appearing dark in their faces. "Is that what it was for?" They caught one another's eye and for the first time I felt the enormity of their ambition and the innocence of their belief.

The verdict: Ultimately, I appreciated The Testament of Mary more in theory than in application. As I read, I was more enamored with the idea of this novella than the novella itself. In many ways, it was a fascinating read, but it wasn't a particularly satisfying one. show less