Abstract
This an excellent book that should attract a wide readership. The author is a theologian and Methodist minister who fully acknowledges the dramatic decline in church attendance in Britain and offers these readings in contemporary British fiction to stimulate religious reflection among a larger public. He is quite clear that ‘churches may continue to trot out old clichés, but soon they will be found wanting’ (p. 159).
These are pages both for those who believe in God and for those who do not. Drawing on texts of largely twenty-first-century British novels, they offer a theologically well-informed guide to ways of reading religiously and thinking theologically. As Iris Murdoch, Hannah Arendt and many others have affirmed, stories and narratives lie close to the heart of what it is to be human, and Dickinson admits, ‘I do my theology, think of God and catch my glimpses of the transcendent world through literature’ (p. 3). These nine chapters lead us carefully and openly through a wide range of contemporary fiction – almost all of it in books that are readily available and not for just the pious and the devout. Each chapter is devoted to a particular type or genre of novel. Dickinson begins with ‘literary novels’: that is, ‘novels [that] are intended to be thought-provoking and are often memorable’ (p. 22), such as Nick Laird’s Modern Gods (2017). This was, perhaps, the most challenging chapter in the book. He then moves on to science fiction, a genre that shares with religion the exploration of the realms of the seen and the unseen. I very much appreciated the discussion of Michel Faber’s The Book of Strange New Things (2014), a fine and complex book that Dickinson interprets excellently. The chapter on dystopic and fantasy literature is very well contextualized in the tradition of Bunyan’s The Pilgrim’s Progress, against which Dickinson helpfully reads Cormac McCarthy’s The Road (2006). There is also a fine reading of Yann Martel’s Life of Pi (2001).
Other chapters deal with historical novels, historical detective fiction and ‘atheist novels’, with a final chapter on novels inspired by biblical narratives. This last category is particularly fascinating in its exploration of how ‘scripture can be read as literature and literature as scripture’ (p. 142). It reminds us that the author is ever mindful of his own life as a pastor, teacher and preacher, and how fiction can unpack and throw new light on thinking about the Bible and the Christian tradition.
David Dickinson carries his considerable learning lightly and graciously. It is exciting to be introduced to a wealth of contemporary fiction, most of which was unfamiliar to me, and to be drawn into new ways of thinking about faith and God through its pages. Most of the novels are concerned with Christianity, although a few also relate to Islam and other traditions. Clear, concise and sure-footed, this is a book for which many people, clerical and lay, in and beyond church congregations, should be grateful.