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    The Testament of Mary
    The Testament of Mary
    The Testament of Mary
    Ebook119 pages1 hour

    The Testament of Mary

    By Colm Tóibín

    4/5

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    Shortlisted for the 2013 Man Booker Prize, Colm Tóibín's provocative, haunting, and indelible portrait of Mary presents her as a solitary older woman still seeking to understand the events that become the narrative of the New Testament and the foundation of Christianity.

    In the ancient town of Ephesus, Mary lives alone, years after her son’s crucifixion. She has no interest in collaborating with the authors of the Gospel, who are her keepers. She does not agree that her son is the Son of God; nor that his death was “worth it”; nor that the “group of misfits he gathered around him, men who could not look a woman in the eye,” were holy disciples.

    Mary judges herself ruthlessly (she did not stay at the foot of the cross until her son died—she fled, to save herself), and her judgment of others is equally harsh. This woman whom we know from centuries of paintings and scripture as the docile, loving, silent, long-suffering, obedient, worshipful mother of Christ becomes a tragic heroine with the relentless eloquence of Electra or Medea or Antigone. Tóibín’s tour de force of imagination and language is a portrait so vivid and convincing that our image of Mary will be forever transformed.

    Editor's Note

    Daring & evocative…

    Tóibín’s daring and evocative novel challenges traditional notions of the holy virgin, humanizing her from ethereal being to grieving mother.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherScribner
    Release dateNov 13, 2012
    ISBN9781451690750
    Author

    Colm Tóibín

    Colm Tóibín was born in Ireland in 1955. He is the author of eleven novels, including The Master, Brooklyn, and The Magician, and two collections of stories. He has been three times shortlisted for the Booker Prize. In 2021, he was awarded the David Cohen Prize for Literature. Tóibín was appointed the Laureate for Irish Fiction 2022-2024.

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    Reviews for The Testament of Mary

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    • 4/5
      This slim novella is a different take on the usual portrayal we get of Mary the mother of Jesus. Entering into her mind and heart, the author imagines what Mary's last years in exile might have been as she agonizes over her memories of her son's torture and death and her emotions and actions during the time. He gives us a woman and a story that "might have been" even if it doesn't fit with the stories in the gospels! Food for thought.
    • 4/5
      A powerful imagining of how the death of Jesus might have been experienced by his mother -- if in fact his mother was a Judean peasant woman in the first century of the Roman Empire. The tale is told by Mary in her old age, living out her life in a house in Ephesus, where two disciples try to get her to remember Jesus life and death as they want to have it remembered. Mary, however, remembers it differently. The story focusses on Jesus' last days and on his death, and Mary does not see this as a glorious event that opens the way to redemption. Or, it it does, she does not think that her son's agony was worth it. Moreover, her own humanity intrudes into the story that came to prevail -- this Mary fled Golgotha in fear for her life. What she longs for is the long ago, when her son was small and safe, and her husband was with her. Based on the spread of ratings here and on Amazon, people either like this book a lot, or dislike it intensely. For a believer, it would be hard to like. For a non-believer, it is a moving and beautifully written story of what Mary's experience -- as a mother and a woman in her time and place -- might have been like.
    • 3/5
      I loved the first few pages of this novella and was really looking forward to the rest of the book but unfortunately it fell a little flat for me. It was interesting but lacked the spark I loved in the introduction. Still...a decent story as it takes so little time to read.
    • 3/5
      If you're a serious Christian, this book will probably upset you, or make you angry. Colm Toibin tells the story of the last days of Christ's life and his crucifixion through the eyes of his Mother, Mary. Recollecting the events in her old age, not far from death, Mary is full of regrets and not too impressed with the path that her son took. She does not believe that he was the son of God and thinks his disciples are "a group of misfits who will not look a woman in the eye."It's these disciples who now provide her with shelter and food, but pester her endlessly for her memories of the last days of her son's life. Mary judges herself unmercifully for leaving the scene of the crucifixion before her son dies out of fear for her own safety. She and Mary (of Mary & Martha) flee into hiding with one of the disciples. While on the run, both Marys have the same dream that Christ rises from the dead. When they relate this dream, they find that the disciples co-opt it as truth, as well as changing the actual facts of the crucifixion for their own advantage.In the end, Mary waits to die without her son, without faith (she now worships at the temple of Artemis, and without hope that there will be any redemption for herself.
    • 4/5
      This daring novella is a first person narrative by the Virgin Mary as she recounts events in her life and that of her son, culminating, of course, with the crucifixion. She is being interviewed by two visitors who want to record her testament for the narrative they are writing about her son. She is not very co-operative since she knows they have a specific agenda: they want stories which will substantiate that Jesus was the son of God, and they become angry and impatient when what she says does not accord with their version of events. She resists their badgering, their “vast and insatiable . . . [and] earnest need for foolish anecdotes or sharp, simple patterns in the story” and refuses to be manipulated to say what they want to hear. She says, “I will do for them what I can, but no more than that. . . . I cannot say more than I say.” She has reason to suspect them when she discovers that a dream she shares of her son’s resurrection becomes recorded as fact.Mary is not the paragon of endless patience, loving kindness and mercy central in Marian doctrine. She is a stubborn, intelligent (though uneducated), and independent woman. She dislikes her son’s followers, calling them “a group of misfits, who were only children . . . or men without fathers, or men who could not look a woman in the eye. . . . Not one . . . was normal.” She flees before her son actually expires because she is convinced she must do so in order to survive, and she admits, “I must let the words out, that despite the panic, despite the desperation, the shrieking, despite the fact that his heart and his flesh had come from my heart and my flesh, despite the pain I felt, a pain that has never lifted, and will go with me into the grave, despite all of this, the pain was his and not mine.” These are hardly the words we would expect to hear from someone considered by some to be the blessed mother of all mankind. Mary remains fiercely devoted to her deceased husband and finds comfort, not in a synagogue, but in the temple of Artemis. Most significantly, she is skeptical of her son’s identification as the son of God. She sees her son as someone who fell in with the wrong crowd: “Gather together misfits . . . and you will get anything at all – fearlessness, ambition, anything – and before it dissolves or it grows, it will lead to what I saw and what I live with now.” She has a profound sense of loss and waste: she says that her son “could have done anything, . . . he had that capacity also, the one that is the rarest, he could have spent time alone with ease, he could look at a woman as though she were his equal, and he was grateful, good-mannered, intelligent.” She feels he was not genuine when he was preaching to his disciples; she says “his voice was false, and his tone all stilted.” She does, however, acknowledge that she did sense something extraordinary about him: “I saw a power fixed and truly itself, formed. I saw something that seemed to have no history and to have come from nowhere.”There are people who would regard this book as blasphemy, but I see it as a humanization of Mary. She is a human mother who suffered unimaginably by seeing her son suffer in unimaginable ways. Speaking of the crucifixion, she says, “I had been made wild by what I saw and nothing has ever changed that. I have been unhinged by what I saw in daylight and no darkness will assuage that, or lessen what it did to me.” Who cannot sympathize with the portrayal of a lamenting mother who expresses grief at the sacrificing of her son by crying, “’I can tell you now, when you say that he redeemed the world, I will say that it was not worth it. It was not worth it.’”I highly recommend this book; it is beautifully written and challenges the reader to consider another view of a woman mentioned in both the Bible and the Quran.
    • 4/5
      This very short novella tells a few episodes in the life of Jesus Christ from the perspective of his mother Mary. She is telling the story many years later to two devoted believers who want to get down every last detail but are often disappointed with her memories and perspectives. Mary herself is more focused on the goddess Artemis and does not relate to the fervor and beliefs of Christ's followers. As she summarizes: "if you want witnesses then I am one and I can tell you now, when you say that he redeemed the world, I will say that it was not worth it. It was not worth it.”
    • 5/5
      Toibin is a marvelous writer. The Testament of Mary shows his remarkable ability to create completely believable narrators. Mary's story packs an emotional wallop. It is absolutely pitch perfect.
    • 4/5
      Wow, expect to hear a lot about this novella. Colm Toibin, author of Brooklyn and The Empty Family, has taken on Mary, Jesus' mother in a brilliantly written but very provocative way. His story begins with Mary as an old woman living alone--Toibin's Mary did not have other children, and Joseph died before the crucifixion. She is not cooperating with the folks who are now working on the Gospels. She doesn't believe her son was the son of God, nor anything else about him being a deity, including his death being worth it. Mary loved her son, but found him to be arrogant and perhaps ill. She found his friends to be misfits, and believed the tales he told and the "miracles" attributed to him to be completely ridiculous and untrue. She is a very judgemental person, but she judges herself most harshly. She is far from being the Madonna that most of us have been taught.I found this to be fascinating and more than a little disturbing, and I am NOT a religious sort of person. I imagine that those who are will be very upset about this book. I know that it made me think about everything I've been told about her, and how (and why) I came to believe it to be true. This book could lead to a lot of amazing conversations if people will stay calm and give it a chance. I hope that they do.
    • 4/5
      First of course one has to suspend their belief and faith (if so inclined) and once that happens it is so incredibly easy to buy into this book. The writing is fantastic, the thoughts and feeling of Mary, the same as mother's everywhere. Looking back at when he was younger and needed her, her feelings of sadness as he left home, and lamenting the fact that he will not listen to her, not even to sane his life. Disliking his choice of friends and their influence over him .Actually quite amazing all that this little book encompasses. The poignancy and heartbreak of his crucifixion. But it is a line, one simple line at the end of the book that made this whole book a wonder to me. Not going to repeat it because I don't want to ruin it for other readers, if it even has the same impact for them. One of the quotes on the back of this book called it audacious, and I think that is a very apt description.
    • 4/5
      The Testament of Mary is a thoughtful and entertaining account of one of the most famous deaths in the world. Mary isn’t exactly warm and fuzzy but I loved her no-nonsense approach to the hoopla that enveloped and influenced her son. Toíbín’s examination of the construction of narrative, and silencing of voices not fitting within that narrative is telling- food for thought when contemplating the stories which have served as the guiding principles in our own lives. Recommended.
    • 4/5
      It is very odd that I seek out alternative versions of bible stories seeing as I barely know the established ones. I have an interest in religion from my standpoint as an Agnostic, but have yet to read the Bible itself. I know my standpoint in itself is enough to offend some, but it ought not to as I respect the right of people to believe in whatever they like and hope the same would apply to me. So, this little book was longlisted for the Booker Prize and I grabbed it from the library hoping it would kick-start my Booker Prize reading again. It is short. Accessible. Written in conversational story-telling style. And it is powerful. In it Mary tells her version of what happened in the days before her sons death, and in the days after. She does not believe her son to be anything like as special as his disciples do, in fact she thinks he is getting too big for his boots, and that the disciples are trouble makers and tyrants. I am sure this must be a controversy to devoted Christians. But I take this story to be just another version of the events the bible describe. To me they are all stories and this one has just as much chance of being the true one as any other. It was interesting, heartfelt yet written with an emotional restraint that felt true from a narrator who had seen her son die a horrible death.
    • 4/5
      Wow, what an interesting take on the life of Jesus as seen through the eyes of his mother, Mary.In a sort of stream of consciousness style Mary describes what she has witnessed as her son began his ministry of miracles and eventual death by crucification. She is an unwilling participant as an eyewitness reporter to those who will write the gospels and in Toibin's simple and eloquent prose she appears so human, so alone, even confused and a little disbelieving as well. Some people, such as I, may think of Mary as always being a one dimensional type of figure. We've seen her in paintings as snippets of her life; with an angel bearing good news, cradling a bundled infant, as the sorrowful mother at the base of the cross and ultimately holding her deceased son. But Toibin reminds us that she's so much more than archaic snapshots, she's a woman who like other mothers, doesn't understand her son, she is the last to know where he's going or what he's doing and who can not relate to the fact that she thinks the guys he's hanging with are "misfits". I tend to like her more now not because of who she was, the mother of Jesus Christ and is often set on a pedestal but because she's really down to earth and simply a mom, just like me.Come on, Mr. Toibin, please follow this book up with a story on the very elusive, Joseph.
    • 5/5
      What if Mary could tell us, from her perspective, what really happened? In this elegantly wrought novella, Colm Tóibín provides us with his imagining of this. It took me a little bit to get swept up into her narrative, but once I did, reading this was a genuine delight. Tóibín's use of language is exquisite. He believably gives voice to this grieving mother, and in the process he subtly explores the power of story, the transformation real events go through to become legend.She says"I do not know why it matters that I should tell the truth to myself at night, why it should matter that the truth should be spoken at least once in the world. Because the world is a place of silence, the sky at night when the birds have gone is a vast silent place. No words will make the slightest difference to the sky at night. They will not brighten it or make it less strange."And yet she speaks and tells her truth. This is almost a five-star read and I will return to it again, I am sure.
    • 5/5
      This is the story of Mary, the mother of Jesus. She is old and lives alone in a far away place. The followers of Jesus come to her and want her to remember any of the details of her life and her son. She is a simple lady and not enlightened by the faith. She remembers the time when her son goes to Jerusalem and she hears about him from a cousin, Maurice. Maurice tells her to warn her son of his growing popularity among the people and the dissatisfaction of the ruling Romans. She decides to go to Jerusalem for a wedding where her son is expected to come and take him away from that city.Just before the wedding Jesus resurrects a dead man and at the wedding turns water into wine. She sees that her son is a different person than what she knew and is unable to convince him of his follies. She returns home dejected. Later from Maurice she finds out that Jesus is arrested and as punishment for his deeds is to be crucified. She reaches Jerusalem to be at his trial and his crucification. Being surrounded by spies and fearful of arrest she escapes Jerusalem and reaches a far off land to spend the reast of her days in annonimity. Later she hears of his resurrection and repents about the fact that she escaped for the fear of her life and was not with her son when he was buried. The prose is lyrical and free flowing. Once you pick up this book it's hard to let go. It's not about religion but about a simple mother caring for her different son. A must read.
    • 5/5
      “I remember too much; I am like the air on a calm day as it holds itself still, letting nothing escape. As the world holds its breath, I keep memory in.” (5)The Testament of Mary is a bold endeavor in which Colm Toibin empathetically enters the heart and mind of Mary, mother of Jesus. She is not a religious figure here, but a mother – observing her son’s troubling behaviour in the months leading up to his torturous death and attempting to come to terms with her grief as darkness descends on her world. Following her son’s crucifixion, Mary escapes being captured by those who would harm her and is living in exile. Her keepers, two of Jesus’ followers, are writing the scriptures, a story which they believe will change the world. Mary is not so sure. “I felt the enormity of their ambition and the innocence of their belief.” (101) Disinterested in collaborating with the authors of the Gospel, Mary struggles to come to terms with that she knows to have happened. Her son, Jesus, is not the Son of God, but the son of her late husband. After he had left home, she observed the crowd of followers her son associated with, and was troubled that no good would come of the association – that which she deemed “hysterical,” a palpable disturbance to which the conclusion was foregone. This “high time” was dogged with gossip, rumours, and stories both true and wildly exaggerated. She recalls the strange atmosphere in Cana where her son is to meet her for a wedding: “I knew already that the crowd I had seen in the street had not come for the wedding. I knew for whom these people had come, and when he appeared he frightened me more than any of Marcus’s words had frightened me.” (46)Of The Testatment of Mary, New York Times Magazine writes, “Toibin’s prose is as elegant in its simplicity as it is complex in the emotions it evokes.” The novel (novella, really) is a quick read at just over 100 pages. But it has a depth which will take me much longer to absorb. Highly deserving of its 2013 Booker nomination and very highly recommended.“I had been made wild by what I saw and nothing has ever changed that. I have been unhinged by what I saw in daylight and no darkness will assuage that, or lessen what it did to me.” (94)
    • 3/5
      This is a novella which will maybe take you an hour to read. It's written by Mary, the mother of Jesus. Near the end of her life, she's living in Ephesus with two disciples who are writing the Gospels. Despite the passing of time, she is still raw, grieving and confused by the events of her son's life and death. Her impression is that he was used by those around him, caught up in events that he couldn't control and that now his followers are trying to create a legacy of his life which isn't consistent with the way that she remembers things. She is frustrated that he couldn't just stay an ordinary man, living with her.One big question in my mind reading the book was - did she not believe that he was the son of God? It would seem not. She gets confused and angry when his followers talk about his father without meaning Joseph. She worships at the temple of Artemis. She talks about the miracles that Jesus worked in his life, but from another perspective. Lazarus was never the same after rising from the dead and who knows for sure that there was water in the jugs before they "turned into" wine. Accounts of Jesus walking on water she attributes to mass hysteria. While this is an interesting perspective, it completely negates the story of the Holy Conception - according to the Bible, Mary knew from the outset whose baby she was carrying. I presume that the Mary in this book would point to that as another aspect of her life that is being twisted by the disciples as they write the story that they want Christians to believe.A lot of thought has gone into this book, the language is almost poetic and its an interesting and thought-provoking perspective, but somehow Mary comes across as a completely dislikable woman: bitter, self-centered and distrustful. I didn't feel that Toibin got under her skin.This would be a good book for book clubs because a) it's very quick to read and b) there are so many layers that would be fascinating to discuss.
    • 5/5
      Colm Toibin's a brave man. He's written a book about Jesus' mother in which she is hardly the pure, pious, porcelain saint man has turned her into. She's grieving. She's smart. She's frightened. She's bone-weary. She's angry. And she's being kept a virtual prisoner, thirty years after the crucifixion of her son, by two of his disciples. Although a slim volume, it's quite a tour de force. Toibin burrows deep into the imagined mind of Mary in order to create an utterly accessible portrait of a woman trapped under the wheel of history. The language is beautiful; the perspective intense. Toibin turns some things inside out, such as the popular idea that Mary knew her son was capital 'd' Divine before his birth. Here, Mary suspects her son is "out of his mind". She finds him frightening and distant. In most ways, Toibin is faithful to the Gospel stories, but because so little, really, is said about Mary, he uses these omissions to explore. For example, in this re-imagining Jesus' mother is too fearful for her own life to stay at the foot of the cross, and thirty years later she finds solace for the absurdity she judges his life to be in pagan gods. One of the most intriguing sections for me was the one in which Lazarus is raised form the dead. Again, Toibin sticks close to the Gospel version of events, however, he takes it a bit further, with an Edgar Allen Poe "Monkey's Paw" twist. Lazarus does indeed come back from the dead, but whether that's a good idea or not is clearly open for debate, as is Jesus' motivations for raising him. The Lazarus who returns isn't quite the Lazarus who died: "Slowly, the figure dirtied with clay and covered in graveclothes wound around him began with great uncertainty to move … like some strange new creature jerking and wriggling towards life." And further on: "Lazarus, it was clear to me, was dying. If he had come back to life it was merely to say a last farewell to it. He recognised none of us, barely appeared able to lift the glass of water to his lips as he was handed small pieces of soaked bread by his sisters."Disquieting? You bet. The disciples, too, bring with them a certain amount of dread. Mary's 'guardians' spy on her, keep her under watch, try and twist her to their will. Like shadows they flit around the corners of the narratives, urging Mary to tell stories about her son that prove he is more than a charismatic leader/healer. She's afraid of them, and she's right to be afraid; it's quite clear it will be easier for them to create the Jesus they want when she's dead.There's no doubt this book will offend some folks, but that's a pity. What a glorious, earthy, REAL woman Toibin has created in this Mary. She's so much more than the bloodless virgin of myth.
    • 4/5
      The basics: The premise is somewhat audacious: years after the crucifixion, Mary lives alone. She recalls the last days of her son's life, including his death. Although the disciples keep her fed and provide housing, Mary does not share their belief that her son was the Son of God.My thoughts: The writing is beautiful and haunting. Mary is such a cultural and religious icon, and Toibin rises to the challenge to imagine Mary and her inner workings in a different way. As a character, she's incredibly dynamic: "I no longer need tears and that should be a relief, but I do not seek relief, merely solitude and some grim satisfaction which comes from the certainty that I will not say anything that is not true." Mary feels emotionally tortured. She reacts the way we would expect a grieving mother to act: she mourns the loss of her son. Yet everyone around her celebrates his death. This contrast is even more vivid when Mary recalls the day of the crucifixion itself. Toibin does not shy away from the horrors of dying in that way. It's difficult to read because Toibin, through Mary and with his own hand, emphasize the humanity of Jesus.Favorite passage: "Oh, eternal life!" I replied. "Oh, everyone in the world!" I looked at both of them, their eyes hooded and something appearing dark in their faces. "Is that what it was for?" They caught one another's eye and for the first time I felt the enormity of their ambition and the innocence of their belief.The verdict: Ultimately, I appreciated The Testament of Mary more in theory than in application. As I read, I was more enamored with the idea of this novella than the novella itself. In many ways, it was a fascinating read, but it wasn't a particularly satisfying one.
    • 3/5
      I just finished reading this yesterday. I really enjoyed Brooklyn but couldn't quite get into this. There's a bit of me that's wondering what the point of it all is. I guess that yes, one could wonder "Why don't we have a Testament of Mary, when we have one from Matthew, Mark, Luke and John...?" So yes, it's an interesting idea that maybe we don't have one because she wouldn't agree with the disciples and say what they wanted her to say. If she had been allowed to speak, what would she have said? The writing on Page 74 was very moving. But...and yet I say "but". The best thing I think Toibin captured was that in the midst of something horrific, ordinary things are going on or, what you remember about a particularly horrific event is weird stuff - like the man with the bird in the cage and the bag of rabbits - because to focus on the horrific thing would send you over the edge, I suppose. I've read two books about religion so far for the Booker - this and [The Marrying of Chani Kaufman]. Now I'm reading [The Spinning Heart]. I haven't found my shortlisted book yet.
    • 5/5
      I finished this book in one fell swoop and I liked it. It is such a different slant, from a different point of view, of a story we all know so well. At university I took many art history courses so of course I came across many paintings/depictions of the Virgin Mary. Many of those portrayals are of a content, nurturing, almost flat and distant person. In this book of Toibin's we encounter a "real" mother, a mother with very major life experiences and tragedies and with all the emotions that one would encounter. She sees her son swirl in a very different and dangerous direction and looses her connection and influence with him and she also looses her connection with her own life and liberty. This would be a very hard parent situation to deal with. It was such a personal sacrifice on so many levels. The story's point of view is that she was not there as a disciple but as a mother. The writing was superb.
    • 4/5
      THE TESTAMENT OF MARYColm TóibínThere is an old joke that goes like this: A very pious nun died and was immediately admitted to Heaven. She was welcomed and told that since she led such a pious life, she could meet anyone in Heaven and ask that person a question. She immediately said she would like to meet the Virgin Mary. Her request was granted. As the nun knelt down in front of Mary in adoration, Mary gently raised her up and looked into her eyes, inviting the nun to ask her question. The nun reverently asked, “How does it feel to be the Mother of Jesus Christ?” Mary thought about the question, then looked at the nun and said, “To tell the truth, I always wanted a girl.” The answer to the nun’s question could also be the plot of THE TESTAMENT OF MARY. It is not the story found in the Christian Bible though it does include several of the most famous incidents. It is the story of a mother and her relationship with her son as she nears the end of her life. She never uses his name.Before his death, their relationship has become strained as he gets more involved with his friends, whom she doesn’t like. “Something abut the earnestness of those young men repelled me....something of their awkward hunger, or the sense that there was something missing in each one of them. Too much talk and,”even worse, when my son would insist on silence and begin to address them as though they were a crowd, his voice all false and his tone all stilted....”She witnesses some of the activities which are considered miracles but sees negative sides as well. Lazarus’s life after being revived was not a blessing for him. “...I still feel, that no one should tamper with the fullness that is death. Death needs time and silence. The dead must be left alone with their new gift or their new freedom from affliction.”When she tried to warn him to not go to the wedding because he was in danger he moved away and said, “Woman, what have I to do with thee?” “ He began to talk to others...using strange proud terms to describe himself and his task in the world....[and that] he was the Son of God.”She thought about his change from a defenseless baby to a young man, “a man filled with power that seemed to have no memory of the years before.” “And what was strange about the power he exuded was that it made me love him and seek to protect im even more than I did when he had no power.”She observed changes in society. Young people wanted to go to Jerusalem and it became more important than it had been. They were held by its pull of money and the future. “I had never heard anyone talk about the future until then unless it was tomorrow....or a feast they attended each year. But not sometime to come in which all would be different and all would be better....It carried away my son. If he did not go, people might have wondered why....”People, men and women alike, were more outspoken about their rulers, laws, and taxes. “Then the talk turned to the miracles my sons and his followers could do, and how many were desperate to follow them now, or merely to find where they were.” She saw “the world itself would undergo a great change, and then I quickly came to see that the change would happen only to me and to the few who know me; it would be only us who would look at the sky at night in the future and see the darkness before we saw the glitter. We would see the glittering stars as false and mocking, or as bewildered themselves by the night as we were, as left-over things confined to their place, their shining nothing more than a sort of pleading.”She talks about her son’s crucifixion in great detail adding that she left before he died because she was afraid she would be captured and possibly killed as well. She states that it was all prearranged even though it appeared that Pontius Pilate was giving the crowd a choice. She did not wash his body or attend the burial because she feared she would be arrested and, possibly, killed.She lives a solitary life, dabbling in pagan religions. No mention is made of her other children. Friends of his bring her food, provide shelter, and visit her (she calls them guards), are preparing their version of the Gospel but she refuses to collaborate with them. They want her to say she was present when he died, washed his body and attended the burial. She refuses. “They want to make what happened live for ever...What is written down, they say, will change the world....He was indeed the Son of God.” They tried to convince her that when she conceived him, she felt differently. They say ”he died to redeem the world. To free mankind from darkness and sin...Sent into the world to suffer on the cross. His suffering was how mankind would be saved. “Saved” “Who has been saved?” she asks. They respond, “Those who came before him and those who live now and those who are not yet born.” “They were saved for eternal life.”She tells them, “I was there. I fled before it was over but if you want witnesses then I am one and I can tell you now, when you say that he redeemed the world, I will say that it was not worth it.”THE TESTAMENT OF MARY is beautifully written with flowing sentences. (If you like short, direct sentences, you won’t find them here.) It does not present the Christian Bible version. It presents a fictional, mother’s perspective.
    • 3/5
      Of course this is fiction; no one knows what happened. There are perhaps some historical inaccuracies (rabbits, etc.), but the idea of telling the crucifixion from Mary's point of view is an interesting idea. There is a lot of ambiguity about the story and a lot of pure imagination.That said, there was something about it that did make the crucifixion seem much more real than the "traditional" ways of telling the story. It was a horrible, merciless way to die. We know that, but this story did seem to bring that home. And, as a church goer and a believer, I've heard the story for years and years. Was I offended by the story? No, definitely not. Unfortunately, so much of the Bible has been westernized, polished, and portrayed that it's sometimes hard to get beyond that. I did think the confusion among the followers of Jesus following the crucifixion was well drawn. To me, this doesn't weaken my faith, but gives it a different perspective (again, realizing that it is fiction), which in the end helps to build a faith that is not built on specific
    • 4/5
      This is a slim little volume, a novella really, a sort of long prose poem. It is small, but heavy.

      Mary, wife of Joseph and mother of Joshua, is facing her own oncoming death and, compelled by her own desire for simplicity and hoping it will make a difference despite her conviction there is no difference to be made, is determined to tell her truth. Her truth is formed of anger, grief, shame, and pain. She denies the stories her son's followers are writing about him, refusing to go along with their attempts to shape events into a great story.

      "I know that he has written of things that neither he saw nor I saw. I know that he has also given shape to what I lived through and that he witnessed, and that he has made sure that these words will matter, that they will be listened to." (page 3)

      On another level, this little novella takes a sharp chisel and hammer to the Christ story and the creation of the New Testament that is likely to upset many a Christian, in particular fundamentalists or literalists. Luckily, this book being a short list Man Booker nominee, (Nope, not a Booker Prize nominee) it's not likely enough people will read it to create much of the controversy it opens. For the less literal Christian, the nonChristian, the non-religious, and those who do not follow the Big Three monotheistic religions, however, it makes for interesting thinking. It posits Mary as a human being, fallible and weak, yet clinging strongly to a truth that is not popular -- that her son was the son of her husband, not of God. Her son's death was a matter of chance and poor choice.

      "I was there," I said. "I fled before it was over but if you want witnesses then I am one and I can tell you now, when you say that he redeemed the world, I will say that it was not worth it. It was not worth it." (page 80)

      What caught me about this fictional recreation of Mary's voice was the woman Colm Toibin envisioned and brought into being, a woman who was a simple creature content with her life, with her family, with her husband, with her God. She loses all of these things, and must replace them with a grim, even heartless, self realization and truth. She isn't stupid or unaware -- she knows of the unrest in her ancient world. She understands that people change, places change, lives change. But she is not agitating for those changes. She longs for a peace made up of sunlight, quiet, her husband and her child. She is a creature of flesh as well as of mind. This Mary inevitably faces the truth she carries and refuses to support any other arrangements of events, any easy narratives or comforting stories.

      In this book, in which she recounts several of the Biblical stories as well as the story of the Crucifixion, she brings us a new viewpoint, one that sees Jesus Christ as a baby and a child and then as a man drawn away from his mother, becoming something his mother cannot understand or want, but to which she is nevertheless still connected. Mary in this story is a very angry woman, but resigned. She wishes and dreams of things not turning out as they did, but accepts that she cannot change the past. However, she's determined that, even if it doesn't matter, she will speak her truth before she dies.

      "All around there is silence and soothing, dwindling light. The world has loosened, like a woman preparing for bed who lets her hair flow free. And I am whispering the words, knowing that words matter, and smiling as I say them to the shadows of the gods of this place who linger in the air to watch me and hear me."
    • 3/5
      A fresh look (an achievement in itself) at some of the events of the gospels, from the point of view of Mary, years after the crucifixion. This brief novella is justifiably sad and bitter. It's underwhelming on the one hand, a bit repetitive and disappointingly prosaic next to the majesty of the KJB. But on the other hand, it's memorable and offers some food for thought while maintaining an interesting ambiguity on the subject of Christ's divinity.

      Probably best to approach this as "a Mary" and not "the Mary." I think what will stay with me are the revisionism of the Calvary scene and the portrait of Mary's antipathy towards the apostles. Full of sympathy, and good as historical fiction, too.
    • 5/5
      First of all, Meryl Streep. Even if I had not been already interested in this novel, finding out it's read by Meryl Streep? I'm in. And she was brilliant.The novel itself is a different side to the traditionally told story of the life of Jesus - what if the version passed down through history isn't quite the way it happened? What would Mary's story actually be? Toibin's Mary is not the sweet, joyful, willing handmaiden of the biblical tale - she is practical, and weary, and guarded, and scared, and the author made me believe right along with her.This is a thought-provoking read, which is sure to cause some to feel unsettled with it's re-imagining of the beloved story. It's a book I will come back to - I think it will hold up to reading again and again. Highly recommended.
    • 4/5
      There are many aspects of this novella which work well, and some which fall short. Mary does come off as rather flat throughout most of the story and it often feels as if Tóibín held himself back from really delving into his character's mind. The novella itself is entertaining and, as one usually expects from Tóibín, lyrical and well-written. There are many passages which roll off the tip of the tongue and Mary often uses gorgeous imagery to describe her emotions. It is definitely worth a read due to its unorthodox handling of Mary's life during the time of her son's crucifixion, but readers should be aware that the blurb on the back of the book makes the book sound much more radical in thought than it ultimately is in execution.
    • 5/5
      This is not the Mary of Renaissance paintings, the Mary whose submissive positioning of head is surrounded with a glowing halo. No, this is a down to earth woman whose feet hurt from shoes unaccustomed to walking dirty paths to Jerusalem.Watching her son, purple robed commanding Lazarus to rise from the dead was a fearful sight of disbelief. Not able to fathom how her baby boy grew to this confident over inflated magician/ruler proved incomprehensible.Later, learning that Lazarus remained barely alive in a near comma state, she wondered how he,dead four days in the ground, could physically and emotionally sustain observing the other side while suddenly pulled up, up from the ground rudely to this reality. And, why any one of God would do such a cruel thing.Watching this boy turned man make a spectacle of himself, commanding vessels of water to magically turn to wine,she wondered how out of control this egotist could possibly go.Watching as before her very eyes, the crowds of these clown like idiots sneer, while the dumb founded shiver in awe, and, the circus grows ever more macabre. Stunned, she wonders why the rising of a dead person was not enough demonstrative showing off for one day! Watching the pack of people called disciples, left Mary feeling that her son was NOT the Christ, but rather an over inflated egoist whose followers were near do wells. Experience taught her that when two or more boys/men are together, there is always misbehavior. Wanting to cuff his ears and make him behave, Mary grows increasingly suspicious.Now, watching as her son stumbles through the streets, head bleeding from thorns that invade, sloped down from a cross too heavy to hold, she remains in the shadows as he is crucified.Carefully scanning the crowds, realizing that this terrible event is well organized and meticulously set in place, she carefully fled away with Mary, the sister of Martha. Hearing his screams as the long nails were driven forcefully into his hands, Mary cannot understand why her son chose this rather than listening to her pleas months ago when she realized no good could come of this, and plead with him to come home with her. Parents whose children have gone astray have felt this feeling of incongruity, the restless nights of no sleep, pondering how someone so good could have developed so badly.Alone now, at the end of her life, suspicious of all, particularly the inquisitive who want answers regarding what she knew and what she believes, quiet, always fearful and overly stubborn, Mary is left to examine what she cannot comprehend and what she truly does not understand.The writing is excellent, the story line is compelling, and provides an entirely different reference than the Mary I learned about in Sunday school.Highly recommended.
    • 4/5
      As with just about any book written about important religious figures, there are many diverse opinions about this one. I had to go see for myself, and was able to pick up the audio version, narrated by Meryl Streep.On the 2013 Booker Prize Shortlist, this short (104 pages in print, just over 3 hrs in audio) powerful narrative gives us a completely different voice for Mary, mother of Jesus. This is not a plaster saint, nor is she wearing anything close to a halo. This is the reflection of an elderly woman, looking back on her life, wondering what happened to turn her precious baby boy into a radical rebel who was ultimately subjected to a brutal and violent death.This is a woman who does not see her boy as the son of God, who doesn't understand the disciples (those bullies her boy got involved with), who is afraid, who is searching for meaning, and who, as she nears the end of her life, is trying to make sense of everything that happened to her son during his short time on earth.As one might expect, Meryl Streep's reading is superb. I actually think this is one book that is much more powerful in audio than just being read in print. Mary is brought to us in low, at times almost catatonic, monotones. Her dreamlike remembrances give us an insight unlike any Christians are used to in their Bible readings. In particular, her version of the resurrection of Lazarus gives us an almost zombie-like figure barely stumbling around supported by his sisters. Mary cannot believe her son would participate in such a quack like show of magic. She doesn't understand, and yet doesn't question him.At Cana, we get a very different picture from the Synoptic gospels. In Toibin's work, Mary is not the instigator; in fact she is trying to get him to keep from making a show of himself. At the crucifixion, which Toibin paints in excruciating detail, we feel for this woman, who in spite of her love for her son (or because of it?) does not stay to witness the end, but rather runs into hiding in fear of her life. It is only in her later dreams that we are given the Pièta vision of Michaelangelo's.This is a powerful read with many opportunities for challenging what we think and believe. In the end, I don't think it will change any religious beliefs, but it will flesh out a marble statue.
    • 3/5
      I was not really taken with this incredibly short piece of writing. I was intrigued by the set-up: Mary, the mother of Jesus, reflecting on her son's last years and death, without reverence or acceptance, while living in some fear for her own safety. Her recollections and impressions do not jive with the Biblical accounts we are familiar with; she had no desire to play along with those who hoped to establish Jesus' posthumous reputation as Son of God and Savior of Mankind, even though her livelihood and well-being seem to depend on their good will. Notably, Tóibín did not call this "The Gospel according to Mary"---there is no hint of good news here. In Mary's eyes, her son's followers were louts, Jesus's miracles were shams, and his brutal death was devoid of any redemptive value. I can believe this version of Mary; I just don't care very much about her, because she seems rather flat on the page.
    • 3/5
      Toibin writes beautiful lyric prose, but The Testament of Mary adds little perspective or insight to the well-known gospel stories that it retells.

    Book preview

    The Testament of Mary - Colm Tóibín

    Praise for

    The Testament of Mary

    Exquisite . . . Tóibín gives a familiar story startling intimacy.

    —The New Yorker

    Tóibín applies a Joycean ruthlessness. . . . Imagining himself into Mary’s interior life is his boldest jump yet.

    —Hermione Lee, The New York Review of Books

    "Mary—silent, obedient, observant—has echoed down two millennia, cementing a potent ideal in the Western imagination. Now the masterful Irish writer Colm Tóibín puts a jackhammer to the cozy, safe, Christmas-card version in The Testament of Mary."

    —Karen R. Long, The Cleveland Plain Dealer

    [A] slim, devastating novel . . . [Tóibín] zeros in on [Mary’s] grief over losing her son, rendering them both uncharacteristically human.

    —Susannah Meadows, The New York Times

    In Colm Tóibín’s spare, quiet novel, Mary herself isn’t a follower of Jesus. Her religious life, told in some of the book’s most glowing passages, centers on memories of silent Jewish Sabbaths. . . . Tóibín treats Mary utterly seriously but not reverently.

    —Kate Tuttle, The Boston Globe

    Mary relates . . . in a voice that is so restrained, so understated and clear, that it renders the pain that much more painful. . . . Despite it unorthodoxies, The Testament of Mary is a very simple—one might say classical—tale, showing how violence, even redemptive violence, frustrates our attempts to make sense of it. We continue to tell stories because that’s all we can do.

    —Anthony Domestico, San Francisco Chronicle

    "You don’t have to be a Roman Catholic to respond, at a deep level, to [The Testament of Mary]. . . . There’s an ars poetica in Mary’s stubbornness and refusal to tell her story neatly."

    —Benjamin Lytal, The Daily Beast

    Tóibín suffuses the story with a sense of mystery and makes the reader feel (perhaps as never before) the tragedy of the Crucifixion.

    —Macy Halford, BuzzFeed

    "[A] compressed masterpiece . . . Tóibín’s The Testament of Mary retells the gospel story from the perspective of Jesus’s mother with sympathy and imagination."

    —Sameer Rahim, The Telegraph (UK)

    [A] fearsomely strange, deeply thoughtful book.

    —Alex Clark, The Guardian (UK)

    Masterly . . . Nowhere in this beguiling and deeply intelligent, moving work is Mary’s attention to detail more instrumental (and more like a novelist’s) than in her account of her son’s death.

    —Robert Collins, The Sunday Times (UK)

    "The Testament of Mary is an important and persuasive book: Tóibín’s weary Mary, sceptical and grudging, reads as far more true and real than the saintly perpetual virgin of legend. And Tóibín is a wonderful writer: as ever, his lyrical and moving prose is the real miracle."

    —Naomi Alderman, The Observer (UK)

    There is a profound ache throughout this little character study, a steely determination coupled with an unbearable loss. Although it has some insightful things to say about religion and the period—the descriptions of the Crucifixion are visceral—it has a universal message about the nature of loss. ‘I can tell you now, when you say he redeemed the world, I will say that it was not worth it. It was not worth it.’

    —Stuart Kelly, Scotland on Sunday

    A flawless work, touching, moving and terrifying.

    —Linda Grant, New Statesman (UK)

    Reading this perfect little novella is like watching someone light a candle inside a lantern.

    —The Age (Australia)

    A stunning interpretation that is as beautiful in its presentation as it is provocative in its intention.

    —Booklist

    [A] poignant reimagining of the last days of Christ.

    —Publishers Weekly

    "[The Testament of Mary] builds to a provocative climax, one that is as spiritually profound as its prose is plainspoken. . . . A work suffused with mystery and wonder."

    —Kirkus Reviews

    title

    Contents

    The Testament of Mary

    About Colm Tóibín

    For Loughlin Deegan and Denis Looby

    The Testament of Mary

    They appear more often now, both of them, and on every visit they seem more impatient with me and with the world. There is something hungry and rough in them, a brutality boiling in their blood, which I have seen before and can smell as an animal that is being hunted can smell. But I am not being hunted now. Not anymore. I am being cared for, and questioned softly, and watched. They think that I do not know the elaborate nature of their desires. But nothing escapes me now except sleep. Sleep escapes me. Maybe I am too old to sleep. Or there is nothing further to be gained from sleep. Maybe I do not need to dream, or need to rest. Maybe my eyes know that soon they will be closed for ever. I will stay awake if I have to. I will come down these stairs as the dawn breaks, as the dawn insinuates its rays of light into this room. I have my own reasons to watch and wait. Before the final rest comes this long awakening. And it is enough for me to know that it will end.

    They think I do not understand what is slowly growing in the world; they think I do not see the point of their questions and do not notice the cruel shadow of exasperation that comes hooded in their faces or hidden in their voices when I say something vague or foolish, something which leads us nowhere. When I seem not to remember what they think I must remember. They are too locked into their vast and insatiable needs and too dulled by the remnants of a terror we all felt then to have noticed that I remember everything. Memory fills my body as much as blood and bones.

    I like it that they feed me and pay for my clothes and protect me. And in return I will do for them what I can, but no more than that. Just as I cannot breathe the breath of another or help the heart of someone else to beat or their bones not to weaken or their flesh not to shrivel, I cannot say more than I can say. And I know how deeply this disturbs them and it would make me smile, this earnest need for foolish anecdotes or sharp, simple patterns in the story of what happened to us all, except that I have forgotten how to smile. I have no further need for smiling. Just as I had no further need for tears. There was a time when I thought that I had, in fact, no tears left, that I had used up my store of tears, but I am lucky that foolish thoughts like this never linger, are quickly replaced by what is true. There are always tears if you need them enough. It is the body that makes tears. I no longer need tears and that should be a relief, but I do not seek relief, merely solitude and some grim satisfaction which comes from the certainty that I will not say anything that is not true.

    Of the two men who come, one was there with us until the end. There were moments then when he was soft, ready to hold me and comfort me as he is ready now to scowl impatiently when the story I tell him does not stretch to whatever limits he has ordained. Yet I can see signs of that softness still and there are times when the glow in his eyes returns before he sighs and goes back to his work, writing out the letters one by one that make words he knows I cannot read, which recount what happened on the hill and the days before and the days that followed. I have asked him to read the words aloud to me but he will not. I know that he has written of things that neither he saw nor I saw. I know that he has also given shape to what I lived through and he witnessed, and that he has made sure that these words will matter, that they will be listened to.

    I remember too much; I am like the air on a calm day as it holds itself still, letting nothing escape. As the world holds its breath, I keep memory in.

    So when I told him about the rabbits I was not telling him something that I had half forgotten and merely remembered because of his insistent presence. The details of what I told him were with me all the years in the same way as my hands or my arms were with me. On that day, the day he wanted details of, the day he wanted me to go over and over for him, in the middle of everything that was confused, in the middle of all the terror and shrieking and the crying out, a man came close to me who had a cage with a huge angry bird trapped in it, the bird all sharp beak and indignant gaze; the wings could not stretch to their full width and this confinement seemed to make the bird frustrated and angry. It should have been flying, hunting, swooping on its prey.

    The man also carried a bag, which I gradually learned was almost half full of live rabbits, little bundles of fierce and terrorized energy. And during those hours on that hill, during the hours

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