Lamb
ISBN: 9781841494524
Description
The birth of Jesus has been well chronicled, as have his glorious teachings, acts, and divine sacrifice after his thirtieth birthday. But no one knows about the early life of the Son of God, the missing years - except Biff, the Messiah's best bud, who has been resurrected to tell the story.
Reviewed on 27th November 2022
This has been on my wish list for so long that I can’t remember who recommended it or why, but I eventually picked it up in a sale, and have not been at all disappointed.
The conceit is that Christ’s pal Biff has been resurrected around the year 2000 to write a more accurate gospel, and this is the result, along with some notes about his time trapped in a hotel room with an angel during the writing process.
In some respects, the novel is respectful to Christianity - the Christ represented remains the actual son of god, many of the events from the traditional gospels do take place, and it doesn’t meddle with the theology.
In other respects it’s hilarious and there’s tons of stuff that Moore has added to make the story more believable or more fun. I particularly enjoyed Biff’s frequent inventions and discoveries.
As the author notes in the afterword, there’s potentially a niche audience - you’ve really got to have that background of knowing the traditional biblical stories to get the jokes and references, but not be the sort of person to get offended by the same. Luckily that’s me.
