The Book Against God by James Wood

The Book Against God Reviews

• 
  BlackOxford

  An Educated Failure
  
  I have no idea what to make of this book. It is apparently pointless, written in deadeningly tedious prose about marriage, religion, and the neuroses of the English middle class. Woolf’s introspection without insight; and Murdoch’s thought reduced to triviality. Yet James Wood is a brilliant literary critic whose nuanced understanding of texts matches anyone’s. How can that person have written and published this book?
  
  The protagonist, Tom, is a neurotic, hapless, puerile slob with poor personal hygiene. He also lies as impulsively as Donald Trump, particularly to his wife, until she gives him the boot. His response is to complain in the manner of Harry Enfield’s petulant teenager, Kevin, about her unfairness.
  
  Characters pop in and quickly out of the narrative with no apparent purpose. The dialogue is stifling in the extreme:
  “Are you all right, Tommy? You know we all care about you.’ The words fell like instantly evaporating rain. ‘Oh good, it’s nice to know that you all care about me,’ I said, with excessive bitterness. ‘You’re being unpleasant again.’ ‘And you are being less than sensitive.’ ‘This isn’t the place for this.’” It goes on for pages like this.
  
  The story is held together by an undisclosed horrid and life-changing event on Christmas Eve. Turns out the effort of getting to the reveal is entirely wasted. The big event is about as trivial as a weather report in the New Testament. Tom’s spiritual journey, implied in the title, is equally trivial and the book leaves him exactly where he started.
  
  There is much philosophical and theological name-dropping throughout, to no point whatsoever. Silly opinions flow constantly at pub meetings, dinner parties, and family get-togethers. “‘No,’ replied Max. ‘I’m not going to church. But I think as I get older that no one is really ever an atheist. Everyone believes.’” And “My intellectual hero is Martin Luther. I don’t think that needs further justification. My spiritual hero –well there are so awfully many, but I will nominate Father Brown, in the marvellous old Chesterton stories. And my moral hero: Winston Churchill.” Yes, and...?
  
  So, a mystery wrapped in an enigma. Clearly fiction is not Wood’s metier. But this book is so bad I find it difficult to judge his other work with my former enthusiasm (See:
  https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...)
• 
  William2

  Notes on first reading.
  
  An excellent bit of counterpoint after Marilynne Robinson‘s highly Episcopalian
  Home, which I’ve just finished. In writing his own novel, Wood has done what it is said a critic cannot do. He is disproving what
  John Updike called “hugging the shore.” The critic hugs the shore, stays close to the particulars of someone else’s work, compares and contrasts them, because he or she is constitutionally incapable of seeking the depths. That doesn’t appear to be a problem for Wood. The prose reminds me in its ranging (some would say elliptical) discursiveness of Vladimir Nabokov‘s superb
  Despair. It really is a charming book though, with pointed humor, deft—at times striking—turns of phrase. It would be wrong to look at it wholly as a vehicle for critical religious discourse. It’s too clever to be that dull. The characterizations crackle.
  
  The narrator is a young Englishman, Thomas, living in London; he’s a procrastinator who hasn’t yet properly launched himself in life. His father is an Anglican vicar who lives somewhere in the north. Thomas has married a concert pianist of considerable gifts. Yet he won’t work on his PhD, which he’ll need if he is to pursue an academic career and keep his wife happy. Instead he spends his days at home dressed in his pajamas filling his notebooks with his Book Against God, a commentary on theological and philosophical readings. One gets the feeling that the book against God is actually a book against his father, the vicar, who’s competent in many ways. As his childhood friend Max puts it,
  
  “You had something, then you lost it. At fourteen or fifteen. I remember you telling me about it. Most of all you had your parents’ faith, and that … had to be fought.” (p. 113)
  
  Max has recently become a popular columnist with The Times. So Thomas is surrounded with excellence, his father, his wife, and Max. Tellingly all of these relationships become stressed as he spins his wheels.
  
  If I have a problem (quibble) with the novel it’s that when I want to double down on character it turns to the abstractions of faith. Thomas has a fine life if he would only engage with it. Instead he seems to want to live a permanent childhood. He’s separated from a beautiful wife he claims to love, but whom he faults for not giving him enough praise. Thomas is “stuck,” in shrink speak. He needs something to snap him awake.
• 
  Anni

  Tom, the narrator is the 30 year old intellectual son of a vicar, a professional student and also a militant atheist. His long drawn out PHD in philosophy has been delayed by a secret writing project leading up to a spiritual crisis which he chronicles in a deadpan, unintentionally comic way. His project is a debate about the existence and nature of God and the insoluble 'problem of evil'
  (i.e. if God is omnipotent and benevolent, how can he allow evil to exist in the world?)
  
  This is a thought provoking and witty approach to difficult concepts, full of literary and philosophical allusions, but enlivened by Tom's over-dramatic style, rendering his existential angst too comic to be tragic.
  
  [This was Woods first novel and as gamekeeper turned poacher, he was given a rough reception by fellow reviewers due to his own reputation as the Guardian's unforgiving literary critic in the late 80's]
  
  Reviewed for Whichbook.net
• 
  Jessie

  I am enjoying this so much! It's like reading my husband's mind, with the bonus of being able to put it down when I'm tired..
• 
  Marguerite

  Thomas Bunting, the main character of James Wood's novel, is a compulsive liar, self-absorbed sponge and the epitome of arrested development. His reason for being, apart from smoking, drinking and lying around idly, seems to be to build a case against God that also is a case against his father, a parish priest. Woods' book is entertaining and quite funny in places, but it's really a story about love and redemption/loss in the end. It's also a reflection about untruths:
  
  "We can't schedule the consequences of our lies."
  
  "There are liars who will tell you that they were pleased to be forced to confession, that as soon as they began to tell the truth it bubbled up wantonly from their mouths. I am not one of those liars. Caught, I tell another lie to hide the first. I surrender a lie with great unwillingness and feel instantly nostalgic, once it has gone, for the old comfort it offered me."
  
  "That curious ecstasy I felt when I lied was the ecstasy of freedom. I became unknowable, unaccountable at the moment I lied. The difficulty was that I was always tempted into further risk. For it's not truth that is bottomless, but untruth."
  
  There also is wisdom about faith:
  "Belief and unbelief are not absolutes, and not absolute opposites. What if they are rather close to each other."
  
  "I'm probably moving towards the idea that since religion is a human creation, and its form is man's, then ... everything in it is at least as true as we are."
• 
  Melody

  I found the protagonist inaccessible and the prose too studious to be enjoyed. It simply didn't work for me on any level.
• 
  Kathryn

  After slogging through this point, I still don't know what the point was.
• 
  Frances Abernathy

  3.5 stars
• 
  Justin

  James Wood is probably as successful as a "literary critic" gets having become a staff writer for the New Yorker, and released a few well-received books of essays. The Book Against God is the Brit's only novel and it kind of reads like it's written by someone who has studied the craft of literature very, very hard. While not quite laborious, Wood's prose is certainly studious, and his story of an intellectual failure struggling to come out from his father's shadow hearkens back to the comedies of manners popular in the Victorian Age. (Admittedly, I'm talking out of my ass here a little bit with these references; in actuality, all I know is that Wood's book feels distinctly "British," and when I think of writings that feel British I think of either Jane Austen or Shakespeare, and since this certainly ain't Shakespeare I'll compare it to Austen and call it a Comedy of Manners. What did Austen write again?)
  
  Wood positions his protagonist, Thomas Bunting, an overeducated slacker who can't seem to finish his PhD, against Bunting's father, an overeducated lovably pompous priest involved in what seems like a perfect marriage. In doing so, he manages to communicate a lot of interesting ideas about faith and atheism without making his characters into talking heads. Thomas, a nonbeliever, simply has to show up at his father's house and argue with all of his friends and close family. Viola: interesting points emerge. Thomas is also a chronic liar, apparently (though Wood tells us this fact repeatedly he never really demonstrates it very clearly with actual action), and this flaw has cost him his beloved wife, Jane. The book doesn't reach for much, plot-wise, but simply depicts him struggling to recover from his separation with Jane, his failure as a true intellectual, and the death of his father. In it's own quiet way it's a very strong piece of writing, and yet also not all that memorable, I think because it's very, VERY quiet with almost zero explosions throughout. I'm getting bored right now as I write about it, and yet I liked it. Though I'm not sure I'd recommend it.
• 
  Marvin

  A hard book to assess from the wise and articulate book critic for The New Republic. Preoccupied with religion & religious arguments (mostly against), with quite a bit about music as well (the main character's wife is a professional pianist), by one of my favorite critics, it's a book that ought to have been intensely interesting. Unfortunately, the main character is so incredibly (and I use this much overused--& misused--word advisedly) selfish & immature that it was hard to care much about what happened to him or what he thought or believed, a critical flaw for this book. And despite some very interesting passages, similar religious arguments were handled with much more depth--and, at the same time, better integrated into an engaging narrative--by Jill Paton Walsh, in Knowledge of Angels.
• 
  Robert Wechsler

  Better than I̕d expected, and yet it was lacking something. The writing was good, and Wood̕s handling of ideas was excellent. What seemed to throw a blanket over it all was the protagonist. Why did he have to portray an atheist as so unappealing, so lacking in everything: personality, courage, energy, cleanliness? It was sort of like loading the dice.
  
• 
  Heather

  Lost interest in this book. Quit halfway through. Main character is unappealing (lazy, loser PhD candidate living off his girlfriend) pace too slow, plot without sufficient conflict.
• 
  Selena

  Alas, couldn't get past the first few chapters.
• 
  Dani Scott

  This was a meandering and unfinished work. That style makes sense given Tom's (our main character's) inability to finish his PhD, but, ultimately, the story did not hang together for me and felt like too brief a snapshot into a listless life. I so wanted to believe in someone or something throughout the book, but Tom is too selfish and self invloved to see others clearly. I felt like I was reading the characters in the book through frosted glass. If your life starts to fall apart, take steps toward gathering the pieces. Tom just chose to stay in bed.
  
  If you don't mind a 200 page pontification, then pick this one up. Otherwise, you might give it a miss.
• 
  Željko Obrenović

  Kad jedan od najvećih živih književnih kritičara napiše knjigu, sve oči su uperene u njega. Ali kad se pokaže da je taj roman zapravo sjajan, trebalo bi da se sva usta začepe. Ipak, ova knjiga nije dobila sjajne recenzije, niti je previše čitana. A trebalo bi da bude. U pitanju je sjajna vivisekcija porodičnih odnosa, religije i uopšte raznoraznih kriza kroz koje ljudi prolaze u životu. Stil je vrhunski, ali opet i nenametljiv.
• 
  Rachel Vroom

  In a attempt to write a book against God James Wood, or rather the main character in the book, writes a theological masterpiece. But the thing is....this book is not The book against God, it is merely the river on which this book floats. I thought it was a very good read.
• 
  Ellie

  Great read. The main character was one of the most insufferable people, but you also kinda wanted it to work out for him? Definitely an introspective novel.
• 
  Blondi Barnet

  Bland and gave up….pointless. Didn’t really care about the characters
• 
  Ellen Johnson

  The book has all so much lead up and then just fizzled out with no resolution to which the whole book was leading up to. I’m so mad and let down.
• 
  Linda Franklin

  I had such high hopes because I LOVE Wood's book reviews. This book, which was sort of interesting at first, just went on and on and on, and I just gave up after page 50 or so...and skipped 10 pages at a time. Yes, it was clever and "well written" except that it was boring. I give three stars just because it is "well written" by a good writer, and I don't want to discourage Wood's followers too much.
  
  
  ~ Linda Campbell Franklin
• 
  The American Conservative

  'This novel is an unexpected delight. The Book Against God reads almost as if Evelyn Waugh were alive again, and had decided to write in his graceful, fluid prose about one of Walker Percy’s heroes: the distracted, contemporary sons of comfort whose search for religious meaning is indirect, halting, and thoroughly believable. Wood speaks in the voice of Thomas Bunting, a youngish, intellectual skeptic religiously obsessed with disproving the existence of God. Bunting is not a conventional unbeliever. As the son of a jovial, learned, and blissfully confident Anglican vicar, Bunting wrestles continually with God—leaving his dissertation to molder, ignoring his beautiful wife, forgetting to bathe, smoking incessantly, and spending his days ensconced with stacks of theological works, scribbling refutations in a notebook. The latter he calls his “Book Against God,” or “BAG,” which he intends to craft into a comprehensive critique of Christian faith—a counterpart to the grand apologetic Pascal once hoped to write.'
  
  Read the full review, "Prodigal Son," on our website:
  
  http://www.theamericanconservative.co...
• 
  Peter

  I'll begin by saying I really enjoyed this book. I found it generally amusing and quite funny at points. I can't say I was incredibly attached to the characters, but the basic plot line was well done. What makes this book better than an "amusing read," in my opinion, is how it goes beyond simply being funny or being a novel of ideas. There are complexities within the simplicities. First of all, it's a book by an atheist in which the protagonist, an atheist, is writing a book "against God," i.e. for atheism. And the man's father is an Anglican priest. Sounds simplistic or even poor, but that's only the surface. The protagonist is a selfish, self-serving, lazy liar, without too many redeemable qualities. The father, in my opinion, was far and away the "best" character in the story, the most loving, selfless, and genuinely happy person. Wood's attempt to avoid easy simplicity pays off.
• 
  Kathleen

  I wish Wood considered himself a writer of fiction, rather than a ccritque, and writer of essays.After reading his December offering in the New Yorker, I knew I had to see what fiction he had written. This is the story of Thomas, a weak, lazy character with strong opinions, The only son of a son of a rector, Thomas is "working" on a PhD that never gets finished, and is happy to let his wife pay the bills, and carry on with being an adult. When it comes time to think about children, he lies and causes a separation from his wife. The characters are drawn so clearly, I would like to see Wood do another novel.
• 
  Simon

  Enjoyable and interesting. It has a sort of Nick Hornby sensibility in the nature of the main protagonist - particularly his dishonesty. But it has loftier aspirations than Hornby's work with a serious and earnest discussion as to the existence of God.
  I think it slightly fails on both counts - it is not as likable or funny as Hornby but nor does it go deep enough into the existential questions. It is understandably not an easy dichotomy with which to wrangle which is why I maintain that it is a good read and worthy of 4 stars.
  
  
• 
  trickgnosis

  I like reading Woods the critic and I liked reading his novel, but was surprised a bit by the tone of the novel. Despite its concern with theodicy it manages to be--almost--lighthearted. It pokes fun at academic life with a lead who owes a little to Ignatius J. Reilly, albeit in a more restrained, more English fashion. Which, really, is high praise. The theodicy debate goes unresolved of course as does the ending but it hardly matters as it's a fun read. Who would've guessed?
• 
  Jess

  [spring 2008] recommended by becki l. and thoroughly enjoyed by me. smartly written, with the theme of compulsive lying frequently providing its own plot twists, and the lies themselves at times practically characters of their own.