A Recent Martyr (Vintage Contemporaries) [Paperback]

"A recent Martyr" is an unusual and edgy novel about human relationships and religious faith. It is a powerful story but one which some people may consider blasphemous. It was written in 1987 and set in New Orleans, where the author grew up.

A person of religious faith may read this to be challenged, an atheist may read it anticipating an attack on religion: but either may get more than they bargained for.

The main characters are Emma Miller, a young mother who narrates much of the story; Pascal Toussaint, with whom she is having an adulterous affair, and Claire D'Anjou, a novice nun. The relationship between Emma and Pascal is becoming increasingly damaging to both parties: from having elements of consensual sadomasochism, it is now gradually spiralling down towards dangerous physical and emotional self-harm. Claire, by comparison, is in many respects a serious candidate for sainthood but her religious devotion is so extreme that her ecclesiastical superior thought her "too fervent" and ordered her to spend some time in the secular world outside the convent to "temper her spiritual zeal with worldly experience."

Pascal meets Claire when she accompanies the parish priest on a visit to the Toussaint family. Because his father is a religious hypocrite, Pascal detests the church and was not expecting to have any time for Claire. However, to his immense surprise, her transparent sincerity and intelligence commands his respect.

The book draws uncomfortable parallels between Emma and Pascal's illicit passion for each other and Claire's religious passion. At one point the author even places in close proximity a sex scene in which Pascal takes Emma very roughly, and a description of Claire at her prayers, reciting from scripture while stripping to the waist and beating herself on the bare back with a leather strap until she has actually drawn blood.

After beginning with an edgy study of the relationships involving Emma and Pascal, Claire, and their families and neighbours, the book describes how New Orleans is hit by a mysterious and deadly plague, and the efforts, sometimes heroic, sometimes just prosaic, which the characters make to deal with it.

At the start of the book is the following quote from Blaise Pascal, which I think is being offered with deliberate irony:

"That we are in ourselves hateful, reason alone will convince us; and yet there is no religion other than the Christian which teaches us to hate ourselves; wherefore no other religion can be entertained by those who know themselves to be worthy of nothing but hatred."

The idea that Jesus wanted us to hate ourselves is totally unbiblical: he ordered us to "Love your neighbour AS YOURSELF" which, as C.S. Lewis pointed out in Mere Christianity means that Christians are not just allowed, but encouraged, to love ourselves as well as our neighbours. Indeed, the church has a name for the error of hating yourself and the world - it's called the Gnostic heresy.

C.S. Lewis also inferred in The Screwtape Letters that all extremes other than extreme devotion to God should be discouraged. If I understand correctly what Valerie Martin is getting at in this book, she appears to be suggesting that even extreme devotion to God can be harmful if it is mixed in with contempt or disdain for yourself.

"A recent martyr" is an interesting but not always comfortable read.