This novel is a tasty, well-written read that may be shocking to some because it presents the theory (like in The Da Vinci Code) that Jesus and Mary Magdelene were married, and that Mary was "written out" of the story by women-hating apostles, particularly Paul, after Jesus' death. This is revealed in a scroll written by Mary herself, which through a series of freak accidents falls into the hands of a troubled Brit named Tom who quit teaching and came to Jerusalem following his wife's death, seeking a spiritual reckoning of some kind as well as solace in the arms of Sharon, an old college flame, now a therapist who sleeps with her clients to "fuck the pain away" (as the singer Peaches has put it) and of course does the same for Tom. So we have scenes of him putting his finger in her vagina to taste her menstrual blood (which smells "saline" or "mineral") and this is contrasted to the backstory of Mary Magdelene's scroll, since the men of Mary time considered women unclean and killed Jesus, their would-be messiah, because he dared to consort with women as equals. Tom, being socialized in a very different era, is the kind of guy who doesn't know who he is unless he's being led around by some woman, so with his wife Kate dead in a freak accident he is at wits' end, overwhelmed with guilt because he was lusting after an underage student at the time - and now in Jerusalem, it seems the solution to his problems is to add even more sexual confusion in the form of Sharon, who is presented as the classic Earth Mother, raw female sexuality itself (as opposed to his wife Kate who was more WASPy and composed). Indeed, all the women in the story blur together in Tom's mind, and he starts hallucinating that he is fucking Kate when in fact he is in bed with Sharon, and sometimes his lover even takes the form of Mary Magdelene, when she's not wailing about how they killed Jesus by breaking his legs on the Cross. Add to this another subplot about an Arab scholar who helps Tom to translate the scroll, and who is possessed by jinns (malicious spirits) and can see them everywhere in the streets of Old Jerusalem - the jinns even disguise themselves as Israeli soldiers and Palestinian youth to stir up hate between the two groups and interfere with the peace process! In the midst of this, which is entertainingly told and a delight to read if you don't take it too seriously, there is unfortunately Tom, who has almost no qualities of his own and is basically a Generic White Guy, well-intentioned but always the last to grasp what's going on - a standin for the presumed reader, I assume. Indeed Tom's cluelessness leads directly to the death that ends the novel, since in the midst of a riot when two Arab youth climb a wall to escape the soldiers on their tail and one of them drops a rifle, Tom's first instinct is to pick it up and stand dumbly with it ("What's THIS doing here?") obliging someone who cares about him more than I do to tackle him and take the bullets that were meant for Tom, and should have left this blithering Englishman bleeding out in the alleys of Jerusalem, a more satisfying ending in my view. The problem is that Tom just isn't up to the level of the historic backstory of a failed messiah and a plot by Jesus' followers to hijack his movement after his death and turn it into a religion that hates women. What do the problems of some idiot high school teacher tormented by sexual guilt and a crisis of faith have to do with such world-shaking material? Or conversely, why would the spirits of the past, desperate to make the truth about Mary Magdelene known in our time, choose such a clueless dope as their messenger? In the end the two stories, Tom's and Mary's, don't really gel, so that either the Mary story is reduced to an exotic backdrop for Tom's personal crisis, or Tom's Generic White Guy problems are a needless distraction from the real drama taking place 2000 years ago. But none of this takes away from the fact that this book is a brilliantly written, fast and fun read. Pick it up if you have a taste for jinns and the supernatural, are bored and want to read something you don't have to take too seriously.
Graham Joyce, has become a favorite author of mine. Along with Jeffrey Ford, the more I read of his work, the more I respect his talent. This was the third novel by Joyce I have read. From Publishers Weekly via Amazon.Com, here is a rundown on the plot: Fleeing his (only semi-explained) guilt after the senseless, accidental death of his wife, Tom Webster quits teaching and visits his longtime friend and ex-lover, Sharon, in Jerusalem. Soon, he is haunted by hallucinations, or perhaps they're apparitions, or djinnis, and is entrusted with some Dead Sea scroll fragments. Joyce's Jerusalem is suffused with squalor and splendor, religious meaning and political struggle, as Tom tries to figure out what a host of emissaries from both the natural and the supernatural realms are trying to tell him about the world and about himself.What I liked best about Joyce's work is that the fantastical in his novels is subtle. Not that the reader needs to dig or watch for clues, but that the characters sometimes don't realize what is happening, or they are just thrown headlong into some vat of magic fantasy. With "Requiem" this is especially poignant. It goes to even deeper degrees. It almost explores the inner workings of one's mind to create the fantastical around them.This book though explores more of the inner workings of the mind. Three of the characters, including the two main characters, you get to see what makes them tick. And they all have issues of guilt they are dealing with from their past. Guilt comes in all kinds of different ways. It even comes from lies that one character tells to them self, and then also tells others. Like one reviewer at Amazon said, the story can be quite tense, yet there is very little action.One very interesting aspect of the story is a conspiracy within the Christian church. The Dead Sea Scroll fragments that he receives helps Tom's inner demons along. He ends up haunted by Mary Magdalene, and it brings forth a shake-up between Mary Magdalene and Saul/Paul regarding the role of women in the church, and lies supposedly perpetrated by Paul. I don't know much about this, but know some of Paul's views.As I mentioned, this was quite a tense story. This was the book that introduced me to Graham Joyce. I saw it as a recommendation, read the synopsis and a couple of reviews, and was drawn in. I ended up obtaining a copy, yet it took me over three years and two other of Joyce's novels before finally getting to it. I think it was best to start with those other novels as it turns out.
What do You think about Requiem (2006)?
I'd probably give this one 3.5. It's beautifully written, a conjuration of impressive scope, and the first half had me completely absorbed. Mr. Joyce does an amazing job at making Jerusalem a character in this book: an exotic, decrepit, aging beauty; crazy, djinn-haunted, schizophrenic, part whore, part aesthete, part fundamentalist fanatic. It's a city at war with itself, and anyone who wanders into its insane tangle of streets may soon find themselves at war within their own soul, and pulled into one or another human conflict: Christians with Christians, ultra orthodox Jews with secular Jews, Palestinians with Jews, Palestinians with Palestinians, human with djinn, angels, gods, goddesses--and most especially, history with the present.The writing was no less beautiful in the second half, but I thought the characterization fell apart somewhat. Characters did and awful lot of explaining and telling, and in a few cases (it seemed to me) acting out of character as established in the first part of the book. There is madness involved, and I understand that even the "sane" characters were pulled into it somewhat, but there were times the characters seemed more like enacting puppets rather than the "real" people Mr. Joyce established early on.The plot was complex and tricksy, which is always a good thing in my book, and although Mr. Joyce tied things up at the end, I didn't have a complete sense of emotional satisfaction. I didn't think the facts of the ending needed to be changed at all, just that he didn't bring me along on the emotional journey as I might have liked to have been. I think that's mostly because of the character issues. Then again, those may be completely personal reactions, my readers fifty-percent gone slightly off the rails.Still, well worth the read and a lovely piece of work. That conjuration of place is especially fine.
—Peejay Who Once Was Minsma
2.5 stars - It was alright, an average book.This had a fascinating underlying story that swirled around biblical lore, conpiracies and mythical creatures (jinns). Sadly, this underlying story kept getting interrupted and overshadowed by the boring plot of the main character. The MC was weak, unlikeable, and dreadfully dull. I had absolutely zero interest in hearing his pathetic drivel as he stumbled through his pitiful life which was governed by base desires rather than intellect, (oh the irony of him being a "teacher"), particularly when there were other far more interesting characters in the periphery. With a different MC this could have been great but the inadequate one that was present instead brought the enjoyability factor way down. This story from Ahmed's POV could have been amazing and Tobie would have been a more captivating MC as well. -------------------------------------------Favorite Quote: All human beings have a tremendous capacity for lying and deceiving and their first victim is invariably themselves.First Sentence: They were helping a party get out of hand, an end-of-term hooley thrown by a teaching colleague during Tom's probationary year.
—Cher
Книга была заглочена за полтора дня. Именно заглочена, т.к. остановиться было просто не возможно. Но прежде всего я люблю, я Очень Люблю Грэма Джойса. Ну и во вторых, сюжет закручен довольно лихо... Что касаемо аннотации, не стоит возлагать большие надежды на детективно-историкографическую составляющую книги. Безусловно, сходство с творением Дэна Брауна есть, но только по форме, но не по сути. Да, автор нам предлагает один из вариантов альтернативной версии христианства. Поскольку я не знаток, для меня прошло... Но не уверена что данная версия будет с распростертыми объятьями принята людьми воцерковленными в православии. В общем, Грэм Джойс в этой книге взялася за две "нехилые" весьма огнеопасные темы - подавленная мужская сексуальность, и подавление сексуальности в христианстве. Интригует, правда? :rolleyes: Довольно правдиво описана история развития невроза, ну и в каком-то смысле апофеоз, почти психотический... Т.е. история одного мужчины, у которого в жизни случилась трагедия, ну а как параллель - Иерусалим - город построенный в "сердце мира", обладающей своей душой в которой переплелись и взаимоперепутались почти все мировые религии, где сталкиваются разные народы в притязаниях на превосходство друг над другом. Так же и в жизни психической у ГГ, структура невроза - это столкновение разных энергий, систем ценностей, эмоций и потребностей... остро сдобренное внезапной травмой. "Питательная среда" Иерусалима провоцирует, нагнетает... но а в итоге исцеляет.Книга очень эротизированна, как ни какая другая у Джойса, так что рекомендую тем, кто готов погрузиться в мир полумистических-эротических переживаний и похождений главного героя.
—Maria Vladimirova
