The Book Against God: A Novel

by James Wood

Overview

Thomas Bunting while neglecting his philosophy Ph.D., still unfinished after seven years, is secretly writing what he hopes will be his masterwork—a vast atheistic project to be titled The Book Against God. In despair over his failed academic career and failing marriage, Bunting is also enraged to the point of near lunacy by his parents' religiousness. When his father, a beloved parish priest, suddenly falls ill, Bunting returns to the Northern village of his childhood. Bunting's hopes that this visit might enable him to finally talk honestly with his parents and sort out his wayward life, are soon destroyed.

Comic, edgy, lyrical, and indignant Bunting gives the term unreliable narrator a new twist with his irrepressible incapacity to tell the truth.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780312422516
Publisher:	Picador
Publication date:	06/01/2004
Edition description:	First Edition
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	5.50(w) x 8.50(h) x 0.60(d)

About the Author

James Wood was chief literary critic of The Guardian (London) and is senior editor at The New Republic. His first collection of essays, The Broken Estate, was published in 1999. He lives in Boston, Massachusetts.

Reading Group Guide

Discussion Questions
1. The novel is narrated by Thomas Bunting, an admitted liar. Though he lies to those around him, exactly how unreliable a narrator is he? Do you trust his narration of his story?
2. Discuss how Tom's intellect gets in the way of his relationship to others? Could his father be considered an intellectual, and if so, how does he manage what his son his unable to do?
3. When referring to his father's death, Tom says that "we can't schedule the consequences of our lies." (p. 7) Do you think this implies that he feels responsible for his father's passing?
Furthermore, how is Guilt a motivating force in the novel?
4. At one point, Tom seems to imply that if there is a god, he should feel guilt; at other points, he seems to imply that the pain and guilt of religious experience are somehow connected — "Pain was not an argument against but for God." p. 55; "…the beautiful words from Revelation, my favourite in the Bible: ‘And God shall wipe away all tears from their eyes; and there shall be no more death, neither sorrow, nor crying, neither shall there be pain; for the former things are passed away.'" How much of Tom's own personal guilt and pain influences his beliefs about religion?
5. What is "artificial" and what is "real" in The Book Against God? How is this connected to the way the novel connects atheism to Christianity?
6. If the novel describes a religious journey for Tom, where does this journey begin for him and where does it end? Where does his faith lie by the book's close?
7. What similarities does Tom journey share with other literary religious quests, such as Paradise
Lost, Pilgrim's Progress, Beowulf, The Odyssey, or St. Augustine's Confessions?
8. What does Tom believe in? See in particular Tom's conversations with Timothy Biffen (p.
167) and Tom's father (p. 220)

9. What is meant by "the ordinary celebrity of being alive," mentioned on p. 238?

Editorial Reviews

How then, does Wood's first novel measure up against his own exacting criteria? The answer is: remarkably well. Like Wood's criticism, The Book Against God is full of ideas, irony, and intelligence.” —The Miami Herald

“Wood has written his own big-thing novel, his first, which has to do with literature and faith but is also, happily, laden with wit, forceful images, and English eccentrics.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Intellectually stimulating and amusing first novel [Wood] mixes serious questions of theology and family relationships so tactfully, cunningly even, that they go down as smoothly as the scotch Tom keeps hidden in the bottle under his bed.” —The Washington Post

From the Publisher