80 Books No.35: Easter by Michael Arditti

I must have missed something with this book. Don't get me wrong, I enjoyed it, for several reasons which I'll go into more detail about below. It was a good read. I just didn't think it was 'one of the first important English novels of the century' (Literary Review) or worthy of having won the Mardi Gras and Waterstone's Book awards. Mind you, I'm becoming increasingly baffled as to why Hilary Mantel has twice won the Man Booker Prize as whilst I loved Wolf Hall and am thoroughly enjoying Bring up the Bodies, I'm not sure what she's done that's so stunningly amazing. However, that is for another blog post.

Back to Easter. I've always had an interest in religion and this seemed an interesting idea, not least from the way it was structured. Each chapter is structured around a service during Holy Week, whilst the novel itself is divided into 3 sections: the first is the events of Holy Week from various perspectives, the second a first person narrative from the curate of St Mary-in-the-Vale church, and the third the events of Holy Week told from different perspectives. In many ways, this is a novel where little of great import happens: nobody gets abducted or murdered, no explosions or true crimes are committed. It is, however, a novel of every day life, in many ways not unlike A Perfectly Good Man, not least in its portrayal of a parish vicar who questions his own faith. And every day life provides such rich material that the novel somehow becomes quite compulsive. Arditti writes very well; his imagery is imaginative and fresh, and he has a strange sense of humour that really appeals to me. His ability to put the profound and the ridiculous together makes for a very enjoyable read in general, even if the sheer number of characters can make it confusing.

However, despite all of this, I don't quite know how it won so many awards. The cynic in me might say it's because Arditti takes the opportunity to champion gay rights, touches up the practically taboo subject of AIDS and has a few pops at the Church of England in the meantime. Whilst these are all valid areas of life to explore, the amount of homosexuals in this tiny parish, many of whom seemed to be suffering from HIV/AIDS did mean that his agenda seemed to be rammed down your throat somewhat. Equally, I wasn't entirely sure what the purpose of the three part structure was other than to be unusual.

I won't end negatively though; I enjoyed this book, and I'm going to search out some more novels by Arditti.