Easter

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Michael Arditti

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Pages: 400 (Paperback)

ISBN: 1905147937

Pub: ARCADIA BOOKS

Pub date: 2008-05-28

Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 183791

Editorial Review:

Can AIDS and the universal agony it brings--not only to its sufferers but to all who suffer on the sidelines--be interpreted as a reworking of the great Christian myths of holy week? Michael Arditti thinks so. He fictionally explores his thesis, which has the potential to be profoundly disturbing, in his new novel Easter with a huge cast centred on the high church parish of St Mary-in-the-Vale, Hampstead.
Gay curate Blair Ashley is a former lover of recently deceased AIDS sufferer Julian Blaikie, parishioner and aristocrat whose Lady Bracknell-esque mother is aggressively unsympathetic. Then there's Lyndon Brooks, infatuated adolescent worshipper, Esther the bishop's wife, who discovers her true lesbian self at age 53, and a pair of women who are married in church by the curate without the knowledge of the vicar--himself happily married but beset by religious doubts. And there are more, including an HIV- positive doctor, a positive librarian and a fiercely "celibate" archdeacon who explores his perversions with a rent boy at the private altar in his cellar.
But graphic homo-erotic sex and the counterpointing of it against the homophobia of the bishop and others notwithstanding, Easter is also a novel about spirituality, suffering and the succouring role of liturgical church services, all meticulously described. Just as it would have been in Jerusalem 2000 years ago, the whole of the human experience is in Easterincluding faith, scepticism, cynicism, honesty, despair, cruelty, snobbery, guilt and corruption.
The account of Trudy England, closet childhood Jewish German refugee who at last finds "peace in herself", is very moving indeed. So is the depiction of the Nigerian Child, Cherish, another refugee, blind and dying of AIDS.

Arditti, who structures his novel in three sections--the last being a working of the events of the first from different angles--often writes with wittily shrewd and observant precision. Someone speaks with "tweed-skirted diction"; a dying man watches the words of a prayer "fly about the room like humming-birds"; and the bishop's PA tartly initiates a visitor into canon biscuit law--"Chocolates are for suffragans, bourbons for archdeacons. Vicars and curates get rich tea". --Susan Elkin

Reader Reviews:

Bold reworking of the central myth of Western culture (1/1 people found this helpful)

The novel centres around the events of Holy Week in the parish of St Mary-in-the-Vale, where the congregation is caught up in a shocking, modern passion story. Told from the viewpoints of different characters - including a Holocaust survivor, an African princess, AIDs patients - giving a portrait of contemporary society's perspectives on the life of the Church of England and the meaning of Easter.
This novel is a challening reflection on the Church and a reworking of the central myth of Western culture. The novel explores the nature of God, the problem of suffering and the existence of evil. The author provides very well argued differing interpretations of key religious messages, in particular around the question of difference in our society. Intimate and epic, poignant and funny, lyrical and analytic - the comic plot being coupled with philosophical purpose.

Easter (0/0 people found this helpful)

At times brilliant, but ultimately flawed in the emphasis on homosexuals and lesbians (at times it appears characters who are not Gay are the odd minority) and AIDS - although I guess it is is probably almost impossible to over-emphasise the impact of AIDS.
Arditti is without doubt a skillful writer, particulary with dialogue, and is so good at describing the challenges and apparent contradictions of living a Christian (C of E style) life in a society where congregations are dwindling, that this is almost two books in one.
I personally could have done with less graphic descriptions of a Curate's search for sexual liberation on Hampstead Heath at night, and more with the author's insight into Christianity and the C of E.
Strangely- although this may of course be the author's intent- some of the less appealing characters (for example "Ted Bishop" the Bishop of London) come over as quite genuine albeit misguided.Hard to know what characters we are expected to approve of and the converse. The "hero" appears to be the Gay Curate with AIDS who attempts to define his faith in terms of his sexual mores and condition. Only Arditti can answer this one.

Nevertheless, thought provoking and worth reading

Easter by Michael Arditti (4/4 people found this helpful)

Easter is a book about events at an Anglican parish in suburban London in Holy Week. It's not an easy book to get into, as it is divided into three different parts, which tell the story from different viewpoints, and moves from one dialogue or stream of consciousness to the next without introducing the characters; I found I often had to look up names in the list of characters at the beginning of the book, and I got confused at times about the sequence of events. This structure makes the book intriguing to read though. I liked the way the author intersperses dialogues, thoughts etc. with formal descriptions of liturgical and other happenings ("The Curate leads the donkey around the church. It takes fright at the cloud of incense and defecates by the font").
I got somewhat irritated by the schematic and very politically correct classification of characters. Most of the good parts are reserved for homosexual and HIV-positive characters with alternative life styles, and the people with more conventional roles or beliefs come off rather badly. The book includes wild charicatures of an evangelical bishop and a repressed homosexual Anglo-Catholic Archdeacon indulging in bizarre masochistic practices.
If you're not turned off by the rather one-sided ideological viewpoint, you'll find this book an interesting, serious exploration of religious themes in modern life. I enjoyed it.

Oliver, the peace-bringer (1/1 people found this helpful)

The circumstances of the encounter between the "hero" of the book - the gay curate Blair Ashley - with his new lover Oliver are anything but romantic. Gay cliché, all right, but very close to reality!

Very close indeed, as far as I am concerned. A few month prior to reading the book (which I enjoyed tremendously!), I met my Olivier in a parc of Brussels, very similar to the surroundings described in the book, and since - me being an active catholic and gay (not always a very easy thing to be!) - I have a strong tendency to put things that happen to me and around me in a biblical/theological context, I immediately thought of the branch of an olive tree, that announced the end of the big flood and the reconciliation between God and humanity ....

I told a colleague .... By chance, she bought the book - for the cover, as she admits. Then she told me, that I should read it too. And so I did. - It was like in the song: Singing my life with his song, killing me softly .... with his book!

As a catholic, it was easy to read about shortcomings of the Anglican church. However, everything that the book speaks about is also very much true about the catholic church.

Blair Ashlye is a wonderful character!

Michael Arditti, thank you very much for this book. You did incarnation the other way round: - in your book, a very important part of my life, of my flesh, if you want, has become word!

An Essential Wake-Up Call For Organised Religion (10/12 people found this helpful)

An initially awkward and caricatured introduction to the characters in this novel put me on my gueard. However, Arditti manages to strip away the fuzziness of fiction and convey real feelings, real prejudices and real hopes so sweetly and resonantly that I was left breathless. A cleverly structured book, it lives far beyond the hype and ensures both an entertaining read as well as a sharp critique of the role of faith in society today. It is a juxtaposition of the traditional and staid against the vibrant and cherished and forced me to confront my well-set ideals of religion.
Easter views the Establishment from inside and out, as the author gazes on society equally perceptively through the eyes of the "freak on the fringes" and the "pillar of society", illuminating, provoking and extolling us to confront the dead wood of our attitudes, to open the door to those forced to the fringes by 19th century ideals and to re-discover the freedom and liberation of a faith based on love, that celebrates the diversity of life, not condemns it.

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