A Curious Pleasure
Neil Griffiths, As a God Might Be
Dodo Ink, 604pp, £12.99, ISBN 9780993575846
reviewed by Andre van Loon
As a God Might Be is a wonderful and weird novel that takes you further and deeper than many others – while yet leaving a sense of emotional frustration by its final, 599th page. To put my cards on the table immediately: I couldn’t stop reading the book, but also closed it repeatedly with a sense of impatience. It’s a curious thing to wolf down a novel that you also think dodges valuable questions – there is an undoubted skill in that. I cannot but recommend you read it for yourself.
The story revolves around Proctor McCullough, a London consultant and father of two, who decides to build a church on a clifftop on the southern English coast. He starts to do so alone, with his bare hands, on a plot of disused land, guided by an inner calling he struggles to call God. Throughout the novel, Proctor confesses again and again that he has no clear conception of what he is doing or why. (The church, finished at the end, remains a thinly described, ramshackle affair; its existence is never the point.)
Soon enough, Proctor attracts a handful of local drifters, somewhere around 20 years old, who start to contribute to his labour. Terry, Rich, Nathaniel and Rebecca, bored stiff as young people in beautiful rural settings often are, flock to the older man’s intensity and inability to answer direct questions. As the five of them sit with a beer to discuss the meaning of it all, petty jealousies and attractions play themselves out – later also involving Rebecca’s mother Judith – while Proctor’s partner Holly and children live through his absences and spiritual discoveries. Above it all, disaster circles, descends and finally strikes in a most unexpected way.
As a God Might Be isn’t really a religious novel, but a story of what it might be like for a middle-aged, well-off man to pursue something higher and nobler. It is intensely interesting: what will a person set on that course encounter, enact? Perhaps the reader might even vicariously attain grace and holiness through the effort of reading. Certainly that wouldn’t be an unfair expectation in picking up a novel with this title, and of this size.
Well. There is undoubtedly mystery in the novel, and Griffiths is a devotee of Fyodor Dostoevsky, who is thanked in the acknowledgements. Unresolvable, beyond-the-pale thoughts and desires haunt the novel’s world, as they do so much of Dostoevsky’s fictional universe; the final chapter, entitled ‘Sermon on the Beach’, is an explicit allusion to The Brothers Karamazov’s ‘The Speech at the Stone’.
And yet reading Griffiths is also quite unlike reading Dostoevsky. Instead of the latter’s threshold style – constant straining towards the unsayable, the untouchable ideal, saints and sinners – we get the more measured melancholy and polished style of a Chekhov. You never quite fall of your chair with Griffiths, as you can do with Dostoevsky; there aren’t genuine WTF moments as you follow the said and the unsaid – with the exception of the disaster on which the novel pivots. Personalities, seductions and a central character who won’t stop asking what it all means, even as his own family disintegrates, make for engrossing reading – but at a level that is ultimately worldly, rather than idealistic or holy.
But that is not to say the novel isn’t worth it – far from it. The style is well-achieved and highly readable; there is a healthy balance between description and dialogue, and the central pull of the plot is carried throughout. Several passages and observations strike a beautiful note, such as when Proctor meets Rebecca’s mother Judith:
In this multi-lit setting, Proctor is nervous about meeting the attractive older woman, his partner Holly hundreds of miles away. He flirts awkwardly with Judith, only to be told:
Griffiths’ style can be highly stylish: he is evidently well-read, and there is a deep pleasure in catching allusions and reading quotations from a host of writers and thinkers, including Wallace Stevens, DH Lawrence, Walter Benjamin, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philip Larkin and WB Yeats. Most of them are male, which leads me to the novel’s most striking shortcoming: As a God Might Be isn’t good at women; they are portrayed as either inconsequential young daughters (Proctor’s daughter is barely described and has very little fictional life), or sexual beings – with nothing in between.
Rebecca, the only girl in the group of drifters surrounding Proctor, is all body and petulance; her mother Judith is someone to consider sleeping with; and Holly is someone who has lost her sex drive after having two children. As for Terry, Rich and Nathaniel, the young male drifters, they are captured better, while still leaving something to be desired. They supply doses of action and reaction, and their youthful awkwardness is well portrayed. But they are somewhat shadowy. Even in the most horrendous plot moments, they sound broadly similar in their speech. God: what about other people, precisely as people?
Perversely, however, this apparent blindness to seeing others more fully, more grounded and capable of their own dark nights of the soul makes As a God Might Be a curious pleasure to read. Proctor and his central mystery make it all worthwhile – and I admire Griffiths for avoiding easy answers or literary formulas to close things off. Indeed, some things won’t be closed; saying so is this novel’s overriding achievement.
The story revolves around Proctor McCullough, a London consultant and father of two, who decides to build a church on a clifftop on the southern English coast. He starts to do so alone, with his bare hands, on a plot of disused land, guided by an inner calling he struggles to call God. Throughout the novel, Proctor confesses again and again that he has no clear conception of what he is doing or why. (The church, finished at the end, remains a thinly described, ramshackle affair; its existence is never the point.)
Soon enough, Proctor attracts a handful of local drifters, somewhere around 20 years old, who start to contribute to his labour. Terry, Rich, Nathaniel and Rebecca, bored stiff as young people in beautiful rural settings often are, flock to the older man’s intensity and inability to answer direct questions. As the five of them sit with a beer to discuss the meaning of it all, petty jealousies and attractions play themselves out – later also involving Rebecca’s mother Judith – while Proctor’s partner Holly and children live through his absences and spiritual discoveries. Above it all, disaster circles, descends and finally strikes in a most unexpected way.
As a God Might Be isn’t really a religious novel, but a story of what it might be like for a middle-aged, well-off man to pursue something higher and nobler. It is intensely interesting: what will a person set on that course encounter, enact? Perhaps the reader might even vicariously attain grace and holiness through the effort of reading. Certainly that wouldn’t be an unfair expectation in picking up a novel with this title, and of this size.
Well. There is undoubtedly mystery in the novel, and Griffiths is a devotee of Fyodor Dostoevsky, who is thanked in the acknowledgements. Unresolvable, beyond-the-pale thoughts and desires haunt the novel’s world, as they do so much of Dostoevsky’s fictional universe; the final chapter, entitled ‘Sermon on the Beach’, is an explicit allusion to The Brothers Karamazov’s ‘The Speech at the Stone’.
And yet reading Griffiths is also quite unlike reading Dostoevsky. Instead of the latter’s threshold style – constant straining towards the unsayable, the untouchable ideal, saints and sinners – we get the more measured melancholy and polished style of a Chekhov. You never quite fall of your chair with Griffiths, as you can do with Dostoevsky; there aren’t genuine WTF moments as you follow the said and the unsaid – with the exception of the disaster on which the novel pivots. Personalities, seductions and a central character who won’t stop asking what it all means, even as his own family disintegrates, make for engrossing reading – but at a level that is ultimately worldly, rather than idealistic or holy.
But that is not to say the novel isn’t worth it – far from it. The style is well-achieved and highly readable; there is a healthy balance between description and dialogue, and the central pull of the plot is carried throughout. Several passages and observations strike a beautiful note, such as when Proctor meets Rebecca’s mother Judith:
‘Between them were areas of cold light; the sun was setting and entered the room obliquely, like a shard of golden glass angled at forty-five degrees. To either side lay shadow. Behind her a lamp was on, the pale orange light forced upward by a cone-shaped shade. There was a pool of light from the kitchen that reached McCullough’s chair.’
In this multi-lit setting, Proctor is nervous about meeting the attractive older woman, his partner Holly hundreds of miles away. He flirts awkwardly with Judith, only to be told:
‘“You’re doing fine.” Her American accent was delicious, liquid and teasing; she knew how seductive it was. She also saw through his shtick and yet was enjoying it for what it was.’
Griffiths’ style can be highly stylish: he is evidently well-read, and there is a deep pleasure in catching allusions and reading quotations from a host of writers and thinkers, including Wallace Stevens, DH Lawrence, Walter Benjamin, Ludwig Wittgenstein, Philip Larkin and WB Yeats. Most of them are male, which leads me to the novel’s most striking shortcoming: As a God Might Be isn’t good at women; they are portrayed as either inconsequential young daughters (Proctor’s daughter is barely described and has very little fictional life), or sexual beings – with nothing in between.
Rebecca, the only girl in the group of drifters surrounding Proctor, is all body and petulance; her mother Judith is someone to consider sleeping with; and Holly is someone who has lost her sex drive after having two children. As for Terry, Rich and Nathaniel, the young male drifters, they are captured better, while still leaving something to be desired. They supply doses of action and reaction, and their youthful awkwardness is well portrayed. But they are somewhat shadowy. Even in the most horrendous plot moments, they sound broadly similar in their speech. God: what about other people, precisely as people?
Perversely, however, this apparent blindness to seeing others more fully, more grounded and capable of their own dark nights of the soul makes As a God Might Be a curious pleasure to read. Proctor and his central mystery make it all worthwhile – and I admire Griffiths for avoiding easy answers or literary formulas to close things off. Indeed, some things won’t be closed; saying so is this novel’s overriding achievement.