About the Book

Bringing it down to earth

Review of Holy Night by Vincent Tilsley
Review written by Chris Clarke.

This is one of the two most extraordinary books I've read. (I'm not going to tell you the other one.)

You know the entire plot before it starts ... the time came for her to be delivered ... there were shepherds abiding in the fields ... the heavenly host ... no room at the inn ... But this telling is different. It starts with a solitary figure watching on a hilltop. Who is he? You don't remember this character in the story; but, yes, the sheep are there all right. And then the narrative is smoothly and unbelievably reinvented before your eyes. The novel becomes a film script, while remaining a novel. The story becomes a science-fiction tale set partly in the control room of an interstellar cruiser, while remaining a faithful retelling of the Christian Myth, starting with Mary's first contractions and finishing with the delivery (it gets quite gynaecological). We are introduced to a succession of remarkable characters (the Archangel Michael is pretty cool), and then, just as the action seems about to pall, we meet the most astonishing character of all: God.

I can't tell you much more without spoiling the succession of twists of the plot and startling surprises which continue until the almost shocking final event. The most surprising thing about each twist of the plot is that you already know, or thought you knew, every one of them. Each step, however, unfolds a deeper insight into the paradox of incarnation. Victory goes not to the triumph of reason and firm moral principles - that's Satan's line - but to an incomprehensible combination of folly and genius. Like a mediaeval mystery play, the robust human drama brings the pious sentimentality that is often attached to the Nativity back down to earth. The young woman in the stable is by her earthiness "incomparably more glorious than the seraphim", in the words of the Orthodox hymn.

What stayed with me from reading this book was the vividness of its presentation of Creation Centred Spirituality. The cosmos of this fiction is astoundingly beautiful and remarkably messy, like our world. As Matthew Fox so ardently stresses, it is constantly, extravagantly, wildly giving birth to the new - as is symbolised here by the character of a God who both has access to infinite wisdom and is childishly delighted at each new discovery he makes in the extraordinary cosmos that has become. In keeping with the Christian myth, he is a God who dances, weeps and wallows with creation, so inspiring us not to stand back and control it, but to participate in the dance; while yet the cosmos remains kosmos (harmony) at its timeless heart.

Looking at this in a theological context, Vincent Tilsley has produced a vibrant and inspiring allegory that breaths life back into the Process Theology of Whitehead, Hartshorne and their followers. For these writers it is also the case that under one aspect God is changing and evolving like the universe, and under another aspect is eternal; yet for them this often remains an intellectual construction that fails to enter the paradox of the Christian myth and so fails to inspire. Not so Holy Night. Under the fantastical guise of science fiction, it gives a psychologically credible account of how archetypal principles such as Wisdom, Folly, Love, Birthing, Law and Destruction weave the universe.

Buy it! Unless you are really allergic to spaceships or angels, you will be astonished and delighted.