Lamb by Christopher Moore

Thank you, Zeba, for the recommendation.

Read: 11 January, 2008

The story is written from the perspective of Biff, Jesus's best friend. In the modern day, an angel raises Biff from the dead so that he can write a new gospel. It follows Jesus from the time Biff met him as a child up until their deaths. It shows us Jesus's early training as a stonemason, his travels into the East, and his eventual ministry.

Lamb is an absolutely hilarious comedy about Jesus that, surprisingly, manages to remain almost completely inoffensive. I loved reading it. It was very funny with a writing style similar to Carl Hiaasen's, but lacked Hiaasen's flaws (like the awfully disappointing endings). It was clever where it needed to be, sensitive where it needed to be, and funny where it needed to be. The characterizations of Jesus, Biff, and Mary Magdalene were stunningly constructed.

There were two portions that I felt a little let down by. The first is when Biff and Jesus get to Calcutta and see a ritual dedicated to the goddess Kali. The scene was important to the story, but it felt dry. It was too descriptive, like an anthropological study. I do understand that it's supposed to be horrifying, so the humour of the rest of the story would have been out of place. But it needed something different. Reading the Afterward, Moore mentions that he had learned about the ritual from Joseph Campbell, which goes a way to explain the tone of the passage. Unable to use his normal humour, Moor had resorted to Campbell's more academic writing style.

I was also a little disappointed that the story skipped over much of Jesus' ministry. The reason given in the book is that the real gospels already tell that story, but I would have liked to have heard Biff's perspective. I understand that it would have been more difficult to write about that portion without offending people and without getting preachy, but the pacing just didn't match up with the rest of the story. It felt like the last few chapters ended the book with a bit of a "plegh."

These two complaints are very minor, though. The book was awesome and I highly recommend it for pretty much anyone. Having studied the New Testament a bit, I found a lot of references to theories about Jesus and a lot of jokes that asked for a certain familiarity with the Bible to get and my previous knowledge enriched my reading. But friends who had no previous interest or understanding found no difficulty in following the story. I also think that reasonable Christians won't find it at odds with their faith. There's something for everyone.