Byzantium,by Stephen Lawhead (HarperPrism/ Zondervan, 646 pp.;
$24, hardcover). Reviewed by Tim Stafford.
The crossover novel—a work of fiction written from a Christian point of
view, yet appealing to general audiences—is an uncommon thing in this century.
Catholic writers like Graham Greene or Evelyn Waugh have managed the trick
masterfully, but their faith was so tormented by doubt that many believers,
while admiring the art, may find the Christianity tortured out of recognition.
Only a few Christian novelists have achieved notable sales while writing
about a Christianity anyone would want to follow. (Susan Howatch and C. S.
Lewis have done so in their very different ways, and Frank Peretti, too.)
It is not easy to include God in a story aimed at a skeptical, materialistic
audience, or to describe faith for those to whom pious is invariably
pejorative.
Stephen Lawhead deserves notice in this context. He writes popular fiction,
mostly found in the fantasy/science fiction section of your local bookstore.
With his Pendragon series he became an undeniable commercial success, especially
in the United Kingdom. Delving into the legendary history of early Britain,
when Druids and Christians contested the future of the Celts, Lawhead wrote
about people of faith and even showed the supernatural in a way that was
not off-putting to unbelievers. He tapped the growing interest in Celtic
lore, and, like all successful novelists, he told a good yarn.
Byzantium, Lawhead's hefty latest effort, is something of a departure
from his previous work in that it contains no fantastic elements (it is
historical fiction), and most of the action takes place far from Britain.
His protagonist, Aidan, is an Irish monk sent off to Constantinople with
a party of monks conveying to the emperor an illuminated manuscript of Scripture.
On the way they are attacked by Vikings, and Aidan is captured and enslaved.
As chance would have it, Aidan's Viking master sets off south on a raiding
trip that leads through Russia to a far-off city that turns out to be
Constantinople by another name. You might expect Aidan to reencounter his
fellow monks there, but before that can happen, he becomes a spy for the
emperor, falls in love with an Islamic beauty, is captured by an Arab army,
enslaved in their silver mines, and …
But there is no need to give away more of the story. Through many twists
and turns of plot, Lawhead keeps you turning pages. The book's interest lies
not in questions of faith (though religion is always present, as it naturally
would be in that era) but in action, intrigue, and ancient lore. Many will
read Byzantium, I am sure, without ever thinking to describe it as
"Christian fiction."
Yet it is very easy to imagine a reader, when he puts down the book, musing,
"So that's what that cross stuff means to Christians." Aidan struggles with
doubt throughout his long journey, and ultimately is reconverted (by his
own Viking captors, whom he has more or less accidentally won over to
Christianity) to faith in a God who suffered.
Byzantium is a crossover novel of a different kind. Lawhead does not
hit you between the eyes with faith, as does, say, Howatch. In a gentle,
almost casual way, his Christianity inhabits the book, unembarrassed. It
does not seem to be the reason for writing. The plot, the adventure, the
ancient atmospherics are Lawhead's interest, and the reader's. Yet they make
a place where Lawhead and his Christian characters evidently feel at home.
Maybe the reader who is attracted to this home will find the God who dwells
there.
Short Notices
The Comforting Whirlwind: God, Job, and the Scale of Creation By Bill McKibben
Eerdmans
95 pp.; $9, paper
God's words to Job out of the whirlwind have been read by countless generations
as perhaps Scripture's most powerful instance of divine speech. Notwithstanding
the library of commentary already devoted to these passages, Bill McKibben
thinks we have not yet plumbed their depths. McKibben (whose Christmas meditation
appears on p. 18 of this issue) draws our attention to what he calls "the
first meaning" of God's speech to Job: that human beings "are a part of the
whole order of creation—simply a part." That cuts deeply against the grain
of human self-centeredness, and never more so than today when, without cease,
"we are assaulted with just the opposite message, the notion that our desire
is of utter and paramount importance." But McKibben is writing not only to
scold and shake us into change but also to celebrate the "untamed joy," the
"rapture" of God's
creation in the natural world.