Some novels have the power to change the way we look at the world. And when that happens, if it is to have any moral purchase, something also changes in us. A good novel undermines our assumptions about what is important, how we see ourselves or think of others, calls in question the value and significance we give, or fail to invest, in the key relationships in our lives. I have read novels that have clattered noisily into my inner living room, rearranging the furniture that up to now I’ve put up with, switching off the telly, kicking away whatever I happen to have my feet up on, hoovering the carpet and changing the colour scheme. In other words a novel can upset the routine, change the perspective, help us to see what needs changing, and helps us to make the effort.
You see, I like the double meaning of ‘novel’ – story, and newness – not novel as in trivial playing around with things for the novelty of it, but novel in the sense of fresh perspective, perceived possibility, hopeful vision. The list of such novels for me is quite short – I mention only one – but I’d be very interested if others have a central canon of novels which have done for you, what I’ve tried to explain above.
Chaim Potok, My Name is Asher Lev.
This story about an artistically gifted Jewish boy, growing up in Brooklyn in a community deeply hostile to artistic activity as image making, is a moving exploration of what it means to be an authentic human being, true to who you are, but alert to how who we are is entangled in our deepest relationships. And what happens if who we are (Asher Lev, the artist) collides with who we are in our relationships( the Jewish boy living between his religious tradition, his family and his gift). The novel is a masterpiece of compassionate, imaginative storytelling, sympathetic to the hurt and bewilderment of a people whose tradition is rooted in holy words rather than holy images, but sympathetic too to the hurt and rejection of the young artist whose gift captures unforgettably that ambivalence.
The scene near the end, of the artist’s mother standing at the apartment window, her arms stretched across the lintels as she looks down on her son in the street, and her son looking up seeing his Jewish mother standing in the shape of a cross, is one of the most unforgettable pieces of storytelling I have ever read. So Asher paints that image of his mother in a painting called ‘Brooklyn Crucifixion’, to the consternation and anger of those who love him. I still read it with tears of recognition – that there are times when to be true to ourselves we have to crucify the hopes and expectations of others, and even ourselves. Never thoughtlessly, arrogantly or selfishly – but as an act of self donation to the One whose gift is life, and whose gifts give life such a terrifyingly beautiful, costly and ultimately redemptive trajectory – which is our story. For the artist, the portrayal of his mother in the shape of a cross, offends, scandalises, alienates, those closest to him – yet the painting was the artist’s recognition, and articulation, of the crucifying tensions of love entangled and agonised, but persistent, faithful and refusing to become hard and unreachable.
The mother love of God has never, for me, been more poignantly, or convincingly, portrayed. Read for the first time twenty odd years ago, the book conveys still, a vision of God’s love as both anguished faithfulness and costly joy, revealed in crucifixion and life giving resurrection.
