Possible spoilers
Christopher Moore, Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal.

Ever wonder what Jesus did before he turned 30? Lamb purports to be a record of those years, as written by his best friend Biff.

In contrast to his close friend Joshua bar Joseph, AKA Jesus Christ, Biff is a first-century frat boy–crude, practical, and not terribly spiritual. (They both use vulgar language, which is OK by me.) Biff accompanies his friend on boyhood adventures as well as on the epic journeys of spiritual seeking that occupy Joshua until his ministry begins at age 30. While Joshua is learning from the three wise men — one a scientist/magician, one a Buddhist, one a Hindu — Biff is learning chemistry, kung-fu, and the Kama Sutra. (Well, OK, Joshua also learns kung-fu.)

As a middle-aged believer in the divinity of Christ, I am not the target audience for this book. No, I didn’t find it offensive in the least. I liked the sassy and believable portrait of Mary Magdalene, the confusion and pain of Joshua as he ponders the meaning of being the Messiah, and the extraordinary tenderness of Joshua’s care for a very special friend. (That’s not code for sex.)

However, the idea that Jesus must have performed the usual bodily functions doesn’t revolutionize my thinking about religion. I’m already aware of the sweat, blood, piss, and shit of incarnation.

I enjoyed it while I was reading it, but it didn’t engage my mind, and I doubt if I will re-read it. Well-written, amusing, and slight.

Good books and movies that engage similar themes:
Nikos Kazantzakis’ The Last Temptation of Christ (haven’t seen the movie)
Terry Pratchett’s Small Gods and Feet of Clay
Dogma
The Life of Brian

Matt Ruff, Set This House in Order.

Try to imagine On the Road if Neal Cassady and Jack Kerouac had been multiple personalities. That might be something like Set This House in Order, although the Ruff book is better. (I love Kerouac’s tender style in books like Visions of Gerard, but On the Road is self-indulgent.)

Andy is a multiple who has found stability. With the help of a good therapist, he has created an inner landscape and a virtual house for his alters to live in. This structure helps him keep his job and have a reasonably good life. Then his boss and good friend Julie gets him together with Mouse, an undiagnosed multiple who still hasn’t grasped why she loses time, wakes up with strangers, and constantly finds letters and lists giving her instructions on what to do. When these two meet, old certainties start to come apart, and new insights start to come together.

This book hit me hard. It may or may not hit you the same way. I finished this book two weeks ago, and I am still thinking about it, feeling it, processing it. I spent an entire session in therapy discussing it, though I am not a multiple. Maybe later, when I am done sorting out some of the issues it raised, I’ll discuss those here. In the meantime, I can at least review it.

I can’t vouch for its accuracy in describing the experience of having alters, but the psychological insights and the experience of living with (and after) ongoing abuse are rendered with faultless emotional authenticity.

Looking at it as objectively as I can, I can say the writing is clean and transparent. The voices of the various multiples are distinctive. The plot is believable, and it flows from character. The humor is hilarious, fresh, original. The non-multiple characters are complex and believable, too.

Moreover, I never get the feeling the author is either shying away from the violence or secretly enjoying it. (These are common flaws in books written about people with abusive backgrounds.) Nor does he set his survivors on pedestals. They’re flawed, realistic people dealing with the aftermath of horror.

Matt Ruff’s book is humane, generous, heart-breaking, hilarious, subtle, insightful. It’s one of the best books ever written about the ways we all construct the narrative of our lives. It’s also one of the best books ever written about how people survive abuse — and survive having been abused, because even after the abuser is dead, we still fight battles in our souls.

Go out and buy this book. Read it. Buy copies for all your friends. Make them read it. Give it to your therapist and your abusive parents for Christmas. This book is Very Very Good.

Some other good books about coping with mental illness or the aftermath of an abusive childhood:
Joanne Greenburg, I Never Promised You a Rose Garden
Judith Rossner, August
Peter Straub, The Throat and In the Night Room
Neal Stephenson, The Diamond Age

Michael Connelly, Echo Park
Michael Connelly writes consistently good police procedurals set in Los Angeles. Harry (short for Hieronymus) Bosch is a tough, uncompromising investigator haunted by his mother’s murder, his time as a tunnel rat in Vietnam, and his own impulses toward violence. I’ve always cast Gene Hackman in the role — he has the looks, the gruffness, the secret tenderness, and the streak of violence. The noirish, gritty plot moves fast. The cops, lawyers, and suspects are realistic — and realistically diverse.

I’ve read a lot of Connelly’s work, both the Bosch books and others, and he writes lean, tough prose. Echo Park is a good outing.

Other good books by Michael Connelly:
Blood Work
City of Bones
Void Moon

Similar writers:
Raymond Chandler, Dashiell Hammett, Dennis Lehane

What are you reading?