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Easter (Paperback)

by Michael Arditti (Author) "The Curate straightens his alb, kisses his stole and strides out to meet the donkey ..." (more)
4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
RRP: £6.99
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Product details

  • Paperback: 400 pages
  • Publisher: ARCADIA BOOKS (28 May 2008)
  • Language English
  • ISBN-10: 1905147937
  • ISBN-13: 978-1905147939
  • Product Dimensions: 19.3 x 13 x 3.6 cm
  • Average Customer Review: 4.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (15 customer reviews)
  • Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 312,577 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

Amazon.co.uk Review

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 alternate Paperback edition.

Review

Easter is a masterpiece' - Time Out'A huge book written with wit, compassion and a sharp critical eye. The writing is packed with daring imaginative leaps. Apart from Arditti's brilliant comic skills, there is a deep moral core' - Financial Times'It's a delight to find a modern novel that takes religion and all the objections to it seriously as a subject: the rockpool of a London parish teems with all kinds of curious life' - Philip Pullman, Sunday Times'Arditti writes about Western Christianity, as it is manifest in the present Church of England, with pungency and satirical frankness. His style has Joycean echoes. Against a background of the conventional liturgies he places awful actualities in the lives of preachers and practitioners' - Muriel Spark
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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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Easter
72% buy the item featured on this page:
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Customer Reviews

15 Reviews
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3 star:
 (1)
2 star:    (0)
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Average Customer Review
4.6 out of 5 stars (15 customer reviews)
 
 
 
 
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars Easter by Michael Arditti, 1 Jan 2003
This review is from: Easter (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.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars A gripping reminder of the central Christian message, 17 Jun 2000
By William D. Freeman "wdavidfreeman" (Southern California) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Easter (Paperback)
Michael Arditti is building a reputation as a novelist who finds different means to deliver the same fundamental message: Chrisitianity is about love and acceptance not bigotry and exclusion. This means acceptance not only of others but of ourselves including our sexual identities. In this his latest tribute to the Golden Rule, Arditti rips open the the barriers erected by a variety of characters connected with a North London parish to examine their inner beings warts and all. After tracing them from various angles through the events of Holy Week not once but three times Arditti summarizes his conclusions in an Easter sermon (litterally) that should be read and repeated in pulpits throughout the Christian world. Too many nominal Christians fail to realize or are too afraid to accept what a radicalization of their lives the true Christian message of love and acceptance requires of them. Unfortunately, these same people will probably cite the graphic shocks of the story-line to read this book and absorb its message. Still, Arditti may succeed in waking up some not afraid to explore the perimeter of their being.
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10 of 12 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars An Essential Wake-Up Call For Organised Religion, 18 Oct 2001
By A Customer
This review is from: Easter (Paperback)
An initially awkward and caricatured introduction to the characters in this novel put me on my gueard. However, Arditti manages to strip away the fuzziness of fiction and convey real feelings, real prejudices and real hopes so sweetly and resonantly that I was left breathless. A cleverly structured book, it lives far beyond the hype and ensures both an entertaining read as well as a sharp critique of the role of faith in society today. It is a juxtaposition of the traditional and staid against the vibrant and cherished and forced me to confront my well-set ideals of religion.
Easter views the Establishment from inside and out, as the author gazes on society equally perceptively through the eyes of the "freak on the fringes" and the "pillar of society", illuminating, provoking and extolling us to confront the dead wood of our attitudes, to open the door to those forced to the fringes by 19th century ideals and to re-discover the freedom and liberation of a faith based on love, that celebrates the diversity of life, not condemns it.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews

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 16 months ago by P. Greenhalgh

4.0 out of 5 stars Easter
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... Read more
Published 19 months ago by Byzantium

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 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

3.0 out of 5 stars A tedious, cliche-ridden dissapointment
After reading The Celibate I was looking forward to the publication of Michael Arditti's new novel. But what a let down.

The novel is in three sections. Read more

Published on 17 May 2000

5.0 out of 5 stars A most powerful plea for an inclusive catholicity
It is a theological and parsonical truism, preached from countless pulpits, that Christ's Passion, Death and Resurrection take place everywhere and everyday. Read more
Published on 3 May 2000 by richard@ashby10.freeserve.co.uk

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantastic!
This is the book I've been waiting for.... the book that exposes the Church - but in a truly sympathetic way. Read more
Published on 26 April 2000

4.0 out of 5 stars A hyperbolic work , easily trivialised seeing only sex.
This book is compulsive reading if not at times a touch over-written.The clerical depravity is at times beyond belief and perhaps cheaply sensationalised . Read more
Published on 26 April 2000

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