Thirst by Amélie Nothomb

I'm pointing out these issues because this is not what will be written in the Gospels. Why not ? I don't know. The evangelists were nowhere near me when this happened. And regardless of what people have said, they didn't know me. I'm not angry with them, but nothing is more irritating than those people who, under the pretext that they love you, claim that they know you inside out.

Thirst is a retelling of the final days of Jesus' life, told from a jail cell in which he is placed in the day between his trial and his execution. This day, as Jesus notes, doesn't exist--the Gospels present a whirlwind between the betrayal in the Garden of Gethsemane and the crucifixion--but as a literary conceit it works and is consistent with Nothomb's Jesus who is, let's be honest, a bit prickly.

The best part of the book is the seriousness with which it takes the incarnation, the actual embodiment of Jesus. The central image, that of desire, most clearly addressed in the literal thirst of the title but also illustrated by Jesus' desire for food (he's annoyed at how slowly John eats), physical intimacy (he's in a sexual relationship with Mary Magdalene, here styled as Madeline), touch (his favorite moment to reflect on from his perch in eternity is the Pieta), and companionship. There's an anti-gnostic flair to the best sections, aggressive pushback at the gnostic idea of the flesh as evil. Nothomb pushes it even further than most, claiming that God was deficient--indeed, that creation itself is deficient--because it is corporeal while God, having no body, is not.

The first half of the book, where Jesus talks about his miracles and ministry, I enjoyed a lot. Jesus didn't, he says, enjoy performing most of his miracles. Only the wedding at Cana was enjoyable, and after that, miracles were necessary but hard, painful. One is reminded, though Nothomb doesn't cite it, of Luke 8:46, when Jesus is touched by a sick woman and she is healed: "I felt power going out of me." Jesus, when healing here, draws on a power he calls "the husk", a strange name I couldn't quite suss out the reasoning behind. Perhaps this Jesus is a bit touchy because he feels, in a way most Jesuses do not, the loss of his power as it is used to heal others but not himself.

The second half, focusing on the crucifixion, was dicier. I tried very hard to put aside any theological irritation, but certain ideas were repeatedly so frequently that they began to grate, especially Jesus' repeated paeans to the love between he and Madeline. In Thirst, transcendence comes ultimately from this relationship, and it makes the story feel small. The Passion as a doomed romance was never going to be a winner for me--is there a single novel about Jesus that doesn't lean on Jary?

Finally, the book ended on a low note, with Jesus referencing "affirmative action" from the cross, stating that, contra the Gospels, he didn't ask God to forgive his killers, and, finally, achieving his great redemptive moment in the realization that the person who really needed forgiven was... himself. Yeah, after a monologue about how badly his sadistic Father has screwed things up, he realizes that he needs to let all his anger toward himself, for spending his life on others, go, and he dies.

There are good ideas, good writing, powerful themes, but ultimately, there's nothing transcendent in Thirst, for me. Jesus isn't someone you'd want to spend time with--and there's a good chance he wouldn't want to hang out with you either--and his life and death really accomplish nothing in particular. On Easter weekend, it just didn't hit right. Novels about Jesus don't need to be theologically rigorous, but I don't understand making Jesus the protagonist of your book if you've got nothing theological to say.