Winner of the Mardi Gras and Waterstone's Book awards, longlisted for the Costa Novel award. In a fictional climate dominated by materialism, Easter stands apart in its bold exploration of the nature of God, the problem of suffering and the existence of evil. With an unforgettable gallery of characters ranging from a Holocaust survivor and an African princess to AIDS patients and Queen Elizabeth II, Arditti paints a dazzling panorama of contemporary society. In its radical fusion of the sacred and profane, Easter throws down a challenge to believers and non-believers alike.
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Can AIDS and the universal agony it brings--not only to its sufferers but to all who suffer on the sidelines--be interpreted as a reworking of the great Christian myths of holy week? Michael Arditti thinks so. He fictionally explores his thesis, which has the potential to be profoundly disturbing, in his new novel Easter with a huge cast centred on the high church parish of St Mary-in-the-Vale, Hampstead.
Gay curate Blair Ashley is a former lover of recently deceased AIDS sufferer Julian Blaikie, parishioner and aristocrat whose Lady Bracknell-esque mother is aggressively unsympathetic. Then there's Lyndon Brooks, infatuated adolescent worshipper, Esther the bishop's wife, who discovers her true lesbian self at age 53, and a pair of women who are married in church by the curate without the knowledge of the vicar--himself happily married but beset by religious doubts. And there are more, including an HIV- positive doctor, a positive librarian and a fiercely "celibate" archdeacon who explores his perversions with a rent boy at the private altar in his cellar.
But graphic homo-erotic sex and the counterpointing of it against the homophobia of the bishop and others notwithstanding, Easter is also a novel about spirituality, suffering and the succouring role of liturgical church services, all meticulously described. Just as it would have been in Jerusalem 2000 years ago, the whole of the human experience is in Easterincluding faith, scepticism, cynicism, honesty, despair, cruelty, snobbery, guilt and corruption.
The account of Trudy England, closet childhood Jewish German refugee who at last finds "peace in herself", is very moving indeed. So is the depiction of the Nigerian Child, Cherish, another refugee, blind and dying of AIDS.
Arditti, who structures his novel in three sections--the last being a working of the events of the first from different angles--often writes with wittily shrewd and observant precision. Someone speaks with "tweed-skirted diction"; a dying man watches the words of a prayer "fly about the room like humming-birds"; and the bishop's PA tartly initiates a visitor into canon biscuit law--"Chocolates are for suffragans, bourbons for archdeacons. Vicars and curates get rich tea". --Susan Elkin --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
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The Curate straightens his alb, kisses his stole and strides out to meet the donkey. Read the first page
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
9 of 9 people found the following review helpful
By A Customer
Format:Paperback
It is always risky when you start a new novel by one of your favourite novelists. Having absolutely loved Arditti's The Celibate and Pagan and Her Parents, I have been eagerly anticipating Easter. And yet part of me was nervous. What if Easter didn't live up to my expectations?
I needn't have worried. Easter is a wonderful book - it's funny, it's moving, it's sexy and it's profound. Whole chunks of the book take place in church services, but don't be put off. If only all church services were as dramatic (and well-written!) as this, the Church wouldn't be worrying about falling numbers. A whole range of fascinating characters - the local grande dame and her downtrodden companion, a corrupt property developer and his bitchy wife, an Austrian Jewish refugee, a lesbian painter and her New Zealand girlfriend, a North Country librarian with HIV, an African princess from Nigeria (my favourite character), not forgetting the Queen and the Duke of Edinburgh bickering on the way to Westminster Abbey - are brilliantly interwoven in a range of Easter stories. What's more, at the centre Arditti has put the challenging story of a modern Jesus - the curate, Blair (no, not that one!).
What makes the book especially fascinating is the way Arditti has used a highly original structure - looking at the same events through different perspectives - and yet the novel is a compulsive page-turner. Easter makes you laugh and cry and it makes you think. I'd recommend it to everyone. It's the best new novel I've read for years.
7 of 7 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Easter is a book about events at an Anglican parish in suburban London in Holy Week. It's not an easy book to get into, as it is divided into three different parts, which tell the story from different viewpoints, and moves from one dialogue or stream of consciousness to the next without introducing the characters; I found I often had to look up names in the list of characters at the beginning of the book, and I got confused at times about the sequence of events. This structure makes the book intriguing to read though. I liked the way the author intersperses dialogues, thoughts etc. with formal descriptions of liturgical and other happenings ("The Curate leads the donkey around the church. It takes fright at the cloud of incense and defecates by the font").
I got somewhat irritated by the schematic and very politically correct classification of characters. Most of the good parts are reserved for homosexual and HIV-positive characters with alternative life styles, and the people with more conventional roles or beliefs come off rather badly. The book includes wild charicatures of an evangelical bishop and a repressed homosexual Anglo-Catholic Archdeacon indulging in bizarre masochistic practices.
If you're not turned off by the rather one-sided ideological viewpoint, you'll find this book an interesting, serious exploration of religious themes in modern life. I enjoyed it.
I got somewhat irritated by the schematic and very politically correct classification of characters. Most of the good parts are reserved for homosexual and HIV-positive characters with alternative life styles, and the people with more conventional roles or beliefs come off rather badly. The book includes wild charicatures of an evangelical bishop and a repressed homosexual Anglo-Catholic Archdeacon indulging in bizarre masochistic practices.
If you're not turned off by the rather one-sided ideological viewpoint, you'll find this book an interesting, serious exploration of religious themes in modern life. I enjoyed it.
5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
By Byzantium
Format:Paperback
At times brilliant, but ultimately flawed in the emphasis on homosexuals and lesbians (at times it appears characters who are not Gay are the odd minority) and AIDS - although I guess it is is probably almost impossible to over-emphasise the impact of AIDS.
Arditti is without doubt a skillful writer, particulary with dialogue, and is so good at describing the challenges and apparent contradictions of living a Christian (C of E style) life in a society where congregations are dwindling, that this is almost two books in one.
I personally could have done with less graphic descriptions of a Curate's search for sexual liberation on Hampstead Heath at night, and more with the author's insight into Christianity and the C of E.
Strangely- although this may of course be the author's intent- some of the less appealing characters (for example "Ted Bishop" the Bishop of London) come over as quite genuine albeit misguided.Hard to know what characters we are expected to approve of and the converse. The "hero" appears to be the Gay Curate with AIDS who attempts to define his faith in terms of his sexual mores and condition. Only Arditti can answer this one.
Nevertheless, thought provoking and worth reading
Arditti is without doubt a skillful writer, particulary with dialogue, and is so good at describing the challenges and apparent contradictions of living a Christian (C of E style) life in a society where congregations are dwindling, that this is almost two books in one.
I personally could have done with less graphic descriptions of a Curate's search for sexual liberation on Hampstead Heath at night, and more with the author's insight into Christianity and the C of E.
Strangely- although this may of course be the author's intent- some of the less appealing characters (for example "Ted Bishop" the Bishop of London) come over as quite genuine albeit misguided.Hard to know what characters we are expected to approve of and the converse. The "hero" appears to be the Gay Curate with AIDS who attempts to define his faith in terms of his sexual mores and condition. Only Arditti can answer this one.
Nevertheless, thought provoking and worth reading
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
a pleasure to read
This is a well written novel.about the lives of a group of parishoners in a london church and their own personal crucifiction and redemption. Read more
Published 20 days ago by stefanos athinas
2.0 out of 5 stars
Easter
I found the book most distracting (although the subject matter appealed) because there were far too many characters in it and I had to refer to the index of characters FREQUENTLY... Read more
Published 9 months ago by michael mc muckle
5.0 out of 5 stars
Arditti
Anything that Michael Arditti writes is worth reading... but it is not to be read before bed! It demands thought and reflection. This title is no exception. Read more
Published 16 months ago by maltravers
4.0 out of 5 stars
An extraordinary book
I downloaded a sample to my brand-new Kindle and was intrigued by the fact that the story appeared to be constructed around church services and parish affairs in the week leading... Read more
Published on 11 May 2011 by P. Smith
4.0 out of 5 stars
Bold reworking of the central myth of Western culture
The novel centres around the events of Holy Week in the parish of St Mary-in-the-Vale, where the congregation is caught up in a shocking, modern passion story. Read more
Published on 12 Oct 2008 by P. Greenhalgh
5.0 out of 5 stars
Oliver, the peace-bringer
The circumstances of the encounter between the "hero" of the book - the gay curate Blair Ashley - with his new lover Oliver are anything but romantic. Read more
Published on 22 Oct 2001
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Essential Wake-Up Call For Organised Religion
An initially awkward and caricatured introduction to the characters in this novel put me on my gueard. Read more
Published on 18 Oct 2001
5.0 out of 5 stars
An excellent book, which people should read.
I am currently doing a religious studies A-level, and I found this book to be not only very helpful, but also enjoyable in it's discussion of the issues. Read more
Published on 12 Dec 2000
5.0 out of 5 stars
A SUPERB BOOK
BOOK REVIEW
'Michael Arditti's Easter is a revelation. It's no more a book for one season than Dickens' A Christmas Carol. Read more
Published on 29 Jun 2000
5.0 out of 5 stars
WHAT AN SUPERB BOOK
BOOK REVIEW
'Michael Arditti's Easter is a revelation. It's no more a book for one season than Dickens' A Christmas Carol. Read more
Published on 29 Jun 2000
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