The Gospel According to the Son

At the very least, Mailer should have done a little research. A cardboard Jesus in what is usually an empty setting. The few details don't fit. (An altar in a synagogue!)

This is the gospel according to Jesus's own perspective. It was interesting and I found it uplifting, even though I am not a religious person. I found the perspective attributed to Jesus was credible.

While I enjoyed reading this, it left me wanting more. It was sparsely written and didn't go into

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Jesus's feelings in much depth.

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Mailer, Norman. The Gospel According to the Son. Random House, New York, 1997. Retelling of the Gospels from Jesus' point of view. Autographed.

I thought it was a spiritually uplifting novel, not at all blasphemous...but even if you're not a religious person it is a well written novel, a look at familiar stories but from a fresh new angle.

Mailer does an outstanding job of telling the story of the New Testament from the point of view of Jesus. The description of Christ's encounter with Satan in the wilderness is absolutely riveting. I would highly recommend this book to those who wish to understand the basics of Christianity as I

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would recommend Siddhartha to those who wish to understand the basics of Buddhism.

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Very interesting fictional memoir of Jesus of Nazareth. The narrator's voice is highly believable as he undertakes a mission he's not sure he's up to.

Definitely not Mailer at his best — largely a cut-and-paste of excerpts from the four canonical gospels interlaced with Mailer's own commentary as put into the voice of Jesus as first-person narrator.

Credible. Would not be my first choice.

You can watch Mailer talking about reading the NT for the first time in a Charlie Rose interview on Youtube. He comes to it late in life and as an outsider (coming from a jewish heritage).

There's nothing transformative in this book, no radical new take or even divergence from the Biblical

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narrative (as with The Last Temptation for instance). Instead it's almost predictably a take on Jesus as a jewish man of his time, with some uncertainty and trepidation but overall following the beats as laid out in a harmonizing view of the gospels. This is like reading Mailer's own attempt to understand the story of the NT and that's the biggest failing. There's nothing wrong with it, the prose is nice enough, there's just nothing enticing there, no insight or revelation to uncover. It's exactly what you'd expect.

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