I have been hearing about Francis Schaeffer for the last 25 years as one of the leading theologians to come out of the Jesus Movement of the early 70s. I eventually got around to reading him. The book is a collection of two essays on art and the Bible and what is meant by ‘Christian art’. The first essay ‘Art in the Bible’ was very disappointing. But perhaps this is because I am not the target readership. It appears to be aimed at the sort of evangelical Christian who needs a Biblical mandate to do anything from riding a bike to shopping at Asda. Do we really need to have ‘proof texts’ to allow us to create art and use it in a Christian context? Apparently so, and Schaeffer has done a good job of searching the scriptures to find them. However, I remind myself that if people like Schaeffer had not gone about stating what the majority of Christians today consider to be ‘obvious’ Protestantism and the Evangelical movement might still be imaginatively impoverished. Some would say it still is, but thanks to Schaeffer perhaps not as much as it was. The second essay ‘Some Perspectives on Art’ is a lot better. It gives a framework in which art can be appreciated and judged from the perspective of the world view of the artist. He also challenges the other Evangelical preconception that the only art forms that are permissible in a church environment are the Hebrew / Jewish ones we see in the Bible. So in the 80s instead of doing the old grapevine to ‘How good and how pleasant it is’ we could, if the beat allowed it, have done the quick step or the pogo ;)There is some good stuff in this second essay for anyone interested in faith and the arts, but please be aware that it was written to Christians 40 odd years ago who needed ‘permission’ to do what we do quite naturally now. I also disagree with his emphasis on propositional art – ie ‘art with a message’. Although he says that artists are free to create art with or without a conscious message or have ‘religious’ content, his theory that an artist cannot operate independently of her world view dilutes this. I am now reading Steve Turner’s ‘Imagine’ written 28 years after Art and the Bible. Turner is a student of Schaeffer’s and I am very interested to see how his teaching has impacted the thinking of the next generation.

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I have also interviewed the editor of this book about the impact that the energy crisis and the decline of renewable energy sources might have on the publishing industry. You can read all about it over at The Crafty Writer.

Published by Darton Longman Todd.

I picked up this book because of the similarity of its title to the Henri Nouwen book ‘Letters for Mark about Jesus’ – which had touched me deeply when I read it in my early 20s. Like Nouwen, the author has used a series of apparently personal letters to real-life people to address a wider audience about the nature of God, faith and the Christian life. I wondered: could this be a Letters for Mark for the 21^st Century? One the cover, Pete Ward, a professor of theology at King’s College London is quoted as saying: ‘One of the most profound, practical and deeply theological books I have read.’ Was he right? I settled down over three evenings to find out.

Well yes and no. Some chapters touched and challenged me deeply – such as the chapter to ‘Eddie’ whose healing prayers for his dying father (‘in the name of Jesus’) had ‘failed’. And the chapter to his friend Marie who doesn’t believe she needs to be part of a church community to be a Christian. I must admit I couldn’t finish the letter to Tommy, his 12-month-old nephew who had died when he was struck by a falling lamppost in aLondonstreet. The questions Russell was asking about why God allows so much pain and suffering in the world; were just too close to the bone. I will go back and finish that letter – perhaps when I’m feeling less fragile.

However, there were other letters that didn’t touch me or challenge me in the same way. I came out of the letter to his worship-leader friend, Gemma, feeling that I had learnt nothing new; I felt the same way about sin in the letter to his atheist friend, Jonny. But that perhaps is because I am not an atheist and have what I might call a ‘healthy’ awareness of what sin is on a personal and corporate level. I have also spent many years thinking about and contemplating the nature of worship. So rather than a weakness of the book, I see this as inevitable in a work that is addressing so many different ‘types’ of people at different stages of their spiritual walk. Other readers may find these letters deeply challenging, and the ones that touched me, less so.

If you like books that don’t come from a ‘this is what the bible says so we can be in no doubt about it’ position, then you will not be disappointed. Russell, who is a vicar in the Church of England, could be described as a left-leaning evangelical. Some would say ‘Third Way’, but I think Russell himself would object to that label. However, if you do like books that come from a more fundamentalist tradition, then I would challenge you to read it too as it may just give you a framework to allow for the doubts we all have. I grew up in a (dare I say) right-leaning evangelical church. However, over the last 15 years I’ve felt the theological framework I had been given no longer fit the reality of my life or faith. Books like Russell’s (and Phillip Yancey’s and Eugene Petersen’s and Tom Wright’s and Henri Nouwen’s) have helped me stretch my boundaries and still allowed me to call myself a Christian. Let me know if it does the same for you.

Set in 1913, Lost Empires is about a young artist who takes a job assisting his illusionist uncle in a travelling variety show. We follow young Dick over a 12-month period as he falls in lust with an older woman and in love with a young singer who initially does not requite his love. The heady passions of Dick’s love affairs are played out against the backdrop of a murder investigation as one of the troupe is found dead. The ticking clock of the build up to war and the mystery around ‘whodunnit’ give Lost Empires a thriller dimension, however, it is really a literary novel. The insight into a world that is about to be lost forever is incredibly moving and far more interesting than the half-baked mystery of the murder. For readers looking for a good whodunnit, this is not it. But if you are looking for a poignant portrait of a young man in love at a dying period of history then Priestley delivers the goods. I know Priestley primarily as a dramatist (Time and the Conways, An Inspector Calls) and this was the first novel I read. I think I will read him again, but not with the expectation of getting a well-constructed mystery.

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The Long Song is set on a Jamaican sugar plantation in the last years of slavery. Although it deals with some horrific events, it does so with a great deal of humour. This is in no small part due to Levy’s characterisation of her main character, the sassy slave girl July. The reader is saved from being consumed by misery by the device of running a dual narrative of July as a witty old woman looking back on her life. She will not allow her readers to dwell on the sadness of her past.

Levy also balances some of the crasser observations made by her earthy heroine (her opening line is about a black woman being ‘rear-ended’ by a white man) with the tut-tutting of her more cultured son, Thomas. As a reader we secretly delight in the graphic descriptions but are given the opportunity to save face behind Thomas’ admonitions.

The language is vibrant and lyrical and Levy deftly handles different voices and points of view. I also enjoyed the way July and ultimately Levy played with her readers by declaring every so often that what she had written was completely made up then presenting us with a revised, purportedly more truthful, version of the same events. This underlines the view that stories from the past are simply a collection of remembrances which are tainted in varying degrees by the way the teller wants to be remembered.

Although this is certainly a clever, literary book (as it would have to be to be shortlisted for the Man Booker Prize) it should also find an appreciative readership with fans of popular fiction as Levy is such a fine storyteller.

I would highly recommend you add The Long Song to your ‘must read’ list. And if you like that, you should also like my historical literary thriller, The Peace Garden, which deals with the aftermath of the Soweto Riots and its repercussions in the lives of two young lovers.

1. The Long Song by Andrea Levy
2. The Smell of Apples by Mark Behr
3. Revelation for Everyone by Tom Wright
4. The Writer’s Journey by Christopher Vogler
5. The Bible

Yes I know I could take them all if I had them on Kindle (the bible though is), but I bought the rest in my pre-Kindle days and don’t want them to go to waste. Clean underwear is optional but good literature is not.

“There’s much to enjoy in Fiona Veitch Smith’s debut adult novel, The Peace Garden, where the hopes and fears of modern South Africa disrupt the
neatly-ordered flowerbeds of suburban Newcastle. Natalie Porter, twelve years old and insatiably curious, starts to uncover the stories that have shaped the adults around her, and progresses from catching a plant thief to beginning to understand some of the complexities of life and love in a post-Apartheid society. The novel ratchets up to thriller pace and with a nice twist on the traditional ‘follow-that-car’scene as Natalie, older but not much wiser, realises she may be the only person who can thwart a potential murderer.The Peace Garden is a cleverly-plotted novel with nice comic touches, and the author’s personal background produces both a convincing setting for the Newcastle characters, and some telling insights into South African life.”

RS Downie is the New York Times bestselling author of the Ruso series of Roman mysteries.