Easter: Reviews
‘At a time when religion and religion-based hostilities are politically rife throughout the world, the novel of religion has an important place. Michael Arditti writes about Western Christianity, as it is manifest in the present Church of England, with pungency and satirical frankness. His style has Joycean echoes. Against a background of the conventional liturgies he places awful actualities in the lives of preachers and practitioners. Not explicitly, but in purpose and feeling, Easter is a novel on the New Testament theme of Christ’s expulsion of the money-changers from the temple.’
Muriel Spark
‘It’s a delight to find a modern novel that takes religion and all the objections to it seriously as a subject: the rockpool of a London parish teems with all kinds of curious life.’
Philip Pullman, Sunday Times
‘As in his excellent earlier novels, The Celibate and Pagan and her Parents, Michael Arditti is deliberately provocative: he reads at times like the unlikely love child of Derek Jarman and Barbara Pym, presenting a story of parish backbiting against a bleak backdrop of lust, corruption and disease. But this is a novel of such moral seriousness that, before long, one reaches for grander models. In the scale of its aspirations and the savagery of its satire, Easter reminds me of Charles Dickens. I think it is Arditti’s masterpiece and one of the first important English novels of the century.’
Damian Thompson, Literary Review
‘Michael Arditti’s new novel, with its three sections and cast of thousands mirroring the time-honoured triptych, delivers a technically impressive, emotionally moving and deeply disturbing chronicle of death and resurrection. A profoundly and passionately religious novel.’
Peter Stanford, Independent on Sunday
‘A huge book written with wit, compassion and a sharp critical eye. The writing is packed with daring imaginative leaps. Apart from Arditti’s brilliant comic skills, there is a deep moral core to the book.’
Julia Pascal, Financial Times
‘The best thing of all about Easter is that it isn’t just a book for Christians or even just for believers. The beauty of such high-calibre social satire is that you begin to see how what applies to the Church can apply equally to other institutions where hearts, minds and cash are at stake. Arditti’s combination of savage wit and magnanimous heart enables his message to melt in the mouth like a communion wafer while delivering the kick of a Holy mule. It’s rare for a book to stir both the soul and the mind at once, and to provoke peals of laughter as it does so. But miracles happen. Praise be.
Liz Jensen, The Good Book Guide
‘Michael Arditti’s brilliant novel. A latterday Passion story of great distinction.’
Observer
‘The author handles his material with considerable skill… Few other contemporary British writers of fiction are prepared to become immersed in metaphysical territory. Arditti’s dialogue and imagery are memorable, and his eye for the quirks of Anglo-Catholicism recalls Barbara Pym at her best. His depiction of strong emotions especially suffering proceeds from deep feeling and is always honest.’
Rupert Shortt, Daily Telegraph