They have an agenda: They know what they want to write and, almost faute de mieux, they have to interview the mother. Luke, perhaps, or John? - are portrayed as menacing intruders, with the lurking shadowy presence of Stalin’s secret police.

The making of the Gospels is portrayed not as an act of sacred remembrance but as an invasion and a theft. She sees herself as a victim, trapped by men determined to make a story of what she knows is not a story but her life. Throughout the novella, Mary is involved in questions of writing. It is, after all, entitled “The Testament of Mary,” and the word “testament,” which we might be tempted to slide over in our association with its biblical meaning, in fact suggests both the act of witnessing and the preparation of a legacy - usually composed near death. His awareness of these complications leads Toibin to make a deft strategic move at the very beginning of his book by weaving the creation of a text into the structure of his tale. When the character’s life is a part of “The Greatest Story Ever Told,” the ante goes way up. The writer who assumes the task of making a fictional character of someone whose life took place in history faces particular challenges.

She’s a lot closer to Medea than to June Cleaver. “I had developed a hunger for catastrophe.” Contempt. Consider, for example, the elderly Mary’s wish in relation to the Evangelists who persecute her with their insistent visits: “When I look back at them I hope they see contempt.” Traveling by ship after the death of her son, she realizes that she longs for a wreck, a drowning. In my youth, stores sold items called “Mary-like gowns,” which meant you could go to your senior prom looking as undesirable as possible in the name of the Virgin.Ĭolm Toibin’s novella “The Testament of Mary” never even approaches the swampy terrain of sentimentality. The problem with all this is that it has led to centuries of sentimentality - blue and white Madonnas with folded hands and upturned eyes, a stick with which to beat independent women. She has been free for centuries of the “blame Mom” syndrome, representing endless patience, loving kindness, mercy, succor, recourse. None of the negatives that have made Christianity a byword for tyranny, cruelty and licensed hatred have attached to her. Mary, the mother of Jesus, has given Christianity a good name.

The testament of mary colm toibcn