Michael Arditti: Easter

By PHILIP CULBERTSON

Some years ago when the church first began to take the issue of Aids seriously, I was wearing a button that read "The Body of Christ has Aids" when I boarded an aeroplane. The stewardess nervously asked me if I was the one who had Aids.

No, I answered, this is a signal of solidarity, consciousness-raising, to remind us that members of the church are not immune to infection, and that if one member of humanity is HIV-positive, then all of humanity is HIV-positive.

I confess that I read this book, for the first time, a year ago when it came out in hardcover, and didn't like it at all.

I had been fascinated by the mystery and erudition of Artiditti's first novel, The Celibate (Soho, 1995).

I was completely charmed by his second novel, Pagan and Her Parents (Soho Press, 1996, and republished under the less-charming title, Pagan's Father), so much so that I bought a number of copies and gave them to friends. I still think it's one of the finest novels of the 90s.

On first reading, Easter was a disappointment. I'm grateful I've had the opportunity to go back and read it again. It is skilfully written, theologically profound, and a Trollope-esque commentary on the ordinary sorts of people who inhabit the pews of any urban parish.

Two things about this fine novel might appear to put off the general reader.

First, it is set deep inside the liturgical and ecclesiastical tradition of the Anglican Diocese of London. But various friends who are not churched, including my friend Kelby Harmes, have read the novel and found its "churchy" nature both accessible and interesting.

Secondly, every character in the novel is gay or lesbian - including the curate, the Archdeacon, and the bishop's wife - or is directly related to someone who is.

But what better cast might there be to illustrate my alarming button that read "The Body of Christ has Aids"?

Sexuality is not the only topic covered in this novel. Arditti addresses the emptiness of much church tradition, and the lostness of modernity.

The truest and most challenging faith here is most often found among the sinners, which is, after all, one of the main tenets of the teachings of Jesus as well.

The book is structured as a triptych, such as would comprise the reredos of any good Anglican altar.

The left panel, or the first third of the book, looks at Holy Week through the eyes of the less-enlightened parishioners.

The right panel, or the last third of the book, looks at more-or-less the same events, through the eyes of the enlightened.

In the centre panel stands Blair, the gay curate who believes he is HIV-positive, and his struggle to find celebration in the midst of suffering.

In this way, Blair is the featured saint, or dare we say it, the Christ, the man of sorrows through whom the world finds salvation.

This novel was the winner of both the Mardi Gras and Waterstone's Book Award 2000. Arditti is a fine new writer, in the tradition of Alan Hollinghurst, Michael Cunningham, Paul Monette, and perhaps our own Noel Virtue.

As the dialogue between Christian faith and gay identity continues to wrack Anglican, Presbyterian and Methodist Churches in New Zealand, the one hope for a way forward for us all is to find the "human" face of Aids as a metaphor, to quote Susan Sontag. Easter is a challenging and engrossing novel that addresses the fears of the church, as well as the triumph of tenacious faith among the most incarnate of sinners.

Arcadia Publishers

$24.95

* Philip Culbertson is director of pastoral studies at St Johns Theological College, Auckland.