The Testament of Mary is a brutal fictional work about the mother of Jesus Christ. Narrated as a monologue into thin air, in her old age, it is the most inward-facing novel that Colm Tóibín has written since his earlier prizewinning novel, The Master (2004). That work was about the inner life of Henry James, in the final years of the 19th century, and writing it must have prepared Tóibín for the ordeal of writing from inside Mary’s head. The ambition and conceit of his new novel rest on the believability of the voice of Mary. The novel is quite disturbing for how much it succeeds in being a convincing narrative, and also for how much it plays around with the story of Jesus.

Mary begins at the end of her life, examining her memories and her heartache for her son who was crucified. In her own time, she leads the narrative back to the fateful time when Jesus became too famous for his own good. Mary does not dwell on his childhood, and the reader is only privileged to see Jesus from far away, from behind Mary’s eyes. This is Mary’s story, her gospel, and she leaves the room whenever her son begins a sermon for his followers — because “his voice [was] all false, and his tone all stilted, and I could not bear to hear him, it was like something grinding and it set my teeth on edge.” She would not return until the men had dispersed or her son had stopped speaking.

The main thrust of the novel deals with what transpires in Mary’s inner world once she learns that her son is being watched by the authorities. She is warned by a cousin to stop her son from gathering disciples and spreading a desire for revolution. She is asked to hide him. But Jesus rebukes her, with the words “Woman, what have I to do with thee?” Perhaps he is trying to protect her, or perhaps he has developed as big an ego as the number of his followers. This never reaches a point of settlement in Mary’s head. She still loves her son, and she recounts the miracles her son has performed: raising Lazarus from the dead being the chief one among them, but also the turning of water into wine at a large gathering. But at no point does she give into the popular sentiment that Jesus is divine. The myth of Jesus being the son of God spreads, but Mary neither denies it, nor does she verify it.

The book’s jacket does more justice to the extent of Mary’s beliefs than reviews have managed. Many top reviewers have asserted that Mary in The Testament of Mary does not believe her son was the son of God, and that the miracles are wrongly attributed. But nowhere in the novel is this asserted. Instead, Tóibín manages to leave the answer just out of reach, barely subtextual.

Is Mary brave to stay with her son through the torment of his crucifixion, but not brave enough to intervene? Tóibín lets readers choose their own answers, with Mary’s defence and evidence presented fairly. She admits to failure. She admits to doubt. She admits to worshipping not just one god. She revises the meaning of her memories by reinterpreting them. She is utterly human. But by virtue of being a loving mother to Jesus, she is inherently a religious figure as well. She is strong and brutally honest, and the story inside her is as compelling as the story of Jesus according to the Christian tradition. The author has imbued his fictional Mary with an inner life that he admits left even him astonished. Tóibín says reading the work again was taxing, and that he does not want to revisit it anytime soon.

But how can the text not be revisited? The novel is short and crisp, and each carefully crafted sentence in it resounds like a bell chiming with clarity. Through purely an “act of empathy” in which he tried to understand what the actual Mary would have been thinking, Tóibín is able to craft sentences such as this one: “It was a strange period during which I tried not to think, or imagine, or dream, or even remember, when the thoughts that came arrived unbidden and were to do with time — time that turns a baby who is so defenseless into a small boy, with a boy’s fears, insecurities and petty cruelties, and then creates a young man, someone with his own words and thoughts and secret feelings.”The Testament of Mary joins other great books on this subject matter, such as Norman Mailer’s The Gospel According to the Son and Nikos Kazantzakis’s The Last Temptation of Christ. However, it is the first likely lasting masterpiece to be constructed from Mary’s perspective. Surprisingly, her story makes the original Jesus narrative (and all its historical variations) richer.

With its loaded subject matter, a credible and forceful narrative voice, and transporting language, it is no wonder that The Testament of Mary was longlisted for the Booker Prize. At just over a hundred pages, it is well worth the few hours of absorbing reading it promises, and delivers.

The reviewer teaches rhetoric at LUMS

The Testament of Mary

(NOVEL)

By Colm Tóibín

Penguin Books, UK

ISBN 978-0241962978

112pp.