In his 2006 short-story collection, Mothers and Sons, Tóibín brought us relationships that were often characterised by the way they inverted traditional roles. Rarely are they uncomplicated figures of placid, nurturing devotion but they do make for fantastically involving fiction. They will not brighten it or make it less strange."Īnthony Domestico's reviews have appeared in Commonweal, the Harvard Review and the Critical Flame.C olm Tóibín's mothers don't always behave as they should they are often unpredictable, occasionally downright troublesome, prone to gusts of passion or rage or – worse – unnatural indifference. But, in the end, as Mary reminds us, "no words will make the slightest difference to the sky at night. We continue to tell stories because that's all we can do. Still, despite its unorthodoxies, "The Testament of Mary" is a very simple - one might say classical - tale, showing how violence, even redemptive violence, frustrates our attempts to make sense of it. She's stubborn and skeptical, devoted to her dead husband, Joseph, and religiously promiscuous: In the final, lyrical scene, Mary visits a Roman temple and prays to "the great goddess Artemis." Tóibín's Mary is very different from the Mary we're accustomed to. John before her son gives up his spirit - and for not more fully participating in his grief, because "despite the pain I felt, a pain that has never lifted, and will go with me into the grave, despite all of this, the pain was his and not mine." Throughout the narrative, she reproves herself for abandoning her son before his death - having been warned that she will be rounded up next, she slips away with St.
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We might think that this is all we can do in the face of such suffering - hold each other and acknowledge the existence of a pain that we can never fully understand. A popular Hawaii destination may be the state's 'No.Visiting I-5's biggest roadside stop, where locals and travelers coexist.CHP shares cause of 11-car pileup in San Francisco.Woman reported missing to SF police died in wrong-way crash, officials say.China jet's nosedive from 29,000 feet baffles crash specialists.We held each other and stood back as he howled out words that I could not catch." Tóibín puts Mary at the scene of her son's death, and here is how she remembers it: "We held each other and we stood back. The story Mary tells is painful: how the charismatic Jesus, "utterly confident and radiant," attracted an unruly following of "fools, twitchers, malcontents, stammerers," those on the margins who were eager to believe that the old world was coming to an end how, at first reluctantly and then more eagerly, Jesus believed his followers when they called him the Son of God how he raised Lazarus from the dead and turned water into wine and how, finally, he was put to violent death.Īnd yet Mary relates all of this - the life-giving miracles and the life-canceling suffering - in a voice that is so restrained, so understated and clear, that it renders the pain that much more painful. Mary, however, is busy mourning, and she refuses to satisfy the men's "earnest need for foolish anecdotes or sharp, simple patterns in the story of what happened to us all." She tells us that "memory fills my body as much as blood and bones," and it is these memories - of blood and bone and violence - that she will share with us. Paul, visit her, asking for details of Jesus' life: They are busy writing the Gospel, building a religion. It was not worth it."Īs the novella opens, Jesus is dead and Mary is living in hiding in Ephesus. As she says, "When you say that he redeemed the world, I will say that it was not worth it.
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This is how Mary, mother of Jesus, remembers her son's death in Colm Tóibín's new novella, "The Testament of Mary." For Mary, the crucifixion was not, as Jesus' followers tell her, "necessary," nor was it done, as they claim, so that humankind "would be saved." In Mary's telling, her son's death is a classical tragedy it may arouse pity and fear, but it will not bring about redemption. I have been unhinged by what I saw in daylight and no darkness will assuage that, or lessen what it did to me." "I have been made wild by what I saw and nothing has ever changed that.