The Testament of Mary

This novel has such a wonderfully bold premise: it’s a retelling of the story of the crucifixion of Jesus through the eyes of Jesus’ mother, Mary. I love how Tóibín takes one of the founding stories of Western civilisation and manages to make it intimate. Jesus is still the Son of God, of course, but he is also the son of a woman, a flesh and blood man, who suffers a torturous death in front of his friends and family.

Using a first-person narrative, Tóibín gives us the world through Mary’s eyes, showing a humble woman caught up in extraordinary… show more.

With characteristic charm, Toibin’s book is almost perversely historically inaccurate, as if he is enjoying teasing the reader: I seem to remember Jesus being sent to his room at one point, like a teenager in suburbia, when Judaean houses of the period were of a single piece; a burial scene feels very much like a burial in a peat soiled Ireland, no Judaean deserts here. And yet the book achieves its own honesty because, as Keats said: “Beauty is Truth, Truth Beauty.”