Thomas Bunting while neglecting his philosophy Ph.D., still unfinished after seven years, is secretly writing what he hopes will be his masterwork--a vast atheistic project to be titled The Book Against God. In despair over his failed academic career and failing marriage, Bunting is also enraged to the point of near lunacy by his parents' religiousness. When his father, a beloved parish priest, suddenly falls ill, Bunting returns to the Northern village of his childhood. Bunting's hopes that this visit might enable him to finally talk honestly with his parents and sort out his wayward life, are soon destroyed. Comic, edgy, lyrical, and indignant Bunting gives the term unreliable narrator a new twist with his irrepressible incapacity to tell the truth.
Customer Reviews:
Avg. Customer Rating: 3.5 / 5.0
Pilgrim's Regress:
Raised in an evangelical Anglican family, James Wood - a successful literary critic who teaches at Harvard and is a New Yorker staff writer - discusses the failure of Christian apologetics to justify belief in a God who allows so much suffering and evil to exist in The New Yorker: "Holiday in Hellmouth," a review of Bart Ehrman's God's Problem: http://www.newyorker.com/arts/critics/books/2008/06/09/080609crbo_books_wood.
The feckless protagonist of Wood's 2003 novel, The Book against God, is hard to... more info
Not For Readers Expecting A Good Story:
The plot in The Book Against God seems simply an armature, on which the author has molded his ideas. The characters are also formed to fortify the primacy of ideas and witty lines. The main character, Thomas Bunting, has lost the garden of childhood and with it his innocence. He, therefore, cannot take the leap of faith that his theologian father has. Quite aptly, Tommy becomes a philosopher. Although he will never finish his Ph.D., the occupation allows him to become a "Doubting Thomas." Opposing her... more info
Not a novel of ideas but ideas trying to make a novel:
The fulsome reactions to this brave attempt by a sensible critic of other's novels who tries to write his own fiction same make me wonder if some of Wood's readers have forgotten to distinguish form from content. True, this storyline has marvellously observed moments, for me especially in the observation of the narrator's friend Max's academic parents in their separate studies, waiting impatiently for human contacts to ebb so they can get back to their research. But the arguments about atheism,... more info
reminiscent of Waugh:
It's a heavy comparison to be sure, but I couldn't help thinking how similar Wood's writing style is to Evelyn Waugh's. I've lost count of how many times I've been told a novel is going to be funny, or that the book is a "comic novel," and it produced a nary a snicker. But aside from Waugh and probably Kurt Vonnegut, Wood's novel is one of the funniest I've read in recent memory. Of course, this achievement is all the more remarkable since Wood's book is chiefly a thoughtful meditation on religion, belief,... more info
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