Only Human: A Divine Comedy - Softcover

Diski, Jenny

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1860499147 ISBN 13: 9781860499142

Publisher: Virago, 2001

Synopsis

Having seen enough of the results of autonomy and imagination with Adam and Eve, and dull obedience in the shape of the dutiful Noah, God tried once more to infiltrate humanity by seeking a solitary man whose history he could control and develop. Abraham was his chosen one. But accidents happen, unforeseen consequences of the best laid plans. Not even God, it appears, is exempt from jealousy. When the Lord made his final creation on earth, love came along for the ride and caused havoc, even to the Creator himself. Between the way of the world and the way of love, no one is safe.

As the Creator and the barren wife wage war, they struggle not only over the affections of Abraham, and control of posterity, but the very notion of truth and storytelling. This brilliant, bitter-comic love story asks awkward questions about the nature of love and faith, and incidentally throws new light on the motivations of our superior Being...

About this title

Review:

Take one grandiose, petulant God, add (his?) Abram and Sarai from Genesis, put the iconoclastic Sarai centre-stage, and you have the makings of Jenny Diski's eighth novel, Only Human: A Comedy. Readers have come to count on Diski's work for its uncomfortable challenges and witty subversions. Here she tackles the biblical account of origins, but her version is filled with sly volte-faces and lovely twists: Who creates who? Who can claim ownership of the grand narrative? Why believe?

Sarai's story is one of innocence tempered by longings that harden into a refusal to suffer fools gladly--and that includes Abram for his obedient faith in his God, as well as this quixotic God himself. In alternating voices this aggrieved, easily dumbfounded God speaks to us in the first person, admitting to being astounded by the inventiveness of humans, and foxed by their desire to become us, when what he has shown them is his eternal I am. Abram's and Sarai's trials and tribulations are many and great: shame and exile, desert wanderings, and, most terrible of all, Sarai's barrenness, which she accepts as "the way of the world", but Abram is consumed by the loss of his begetting. God, meantime, stamps and stomps, and peppers his watchfulness with what he learns from his humans until "I had my fill of mankind and its seething, fleshy, unreliable ways" and so decides that he will become "ahead of the game". What he hadn't bargained for was love--and the consequent desolations of loss. Becoming all too human, he wants to be loved by Abram, and is consumed by jealousy and revenge towards Sarai. He plots against Sarai but her machinations are a match for his. She organises the birth of Ishmael by Hagar; he orchestrates the birth of Isaac, and incidentally renames them Abraham and Sarah and then he tops it with: "The story's mine, not hers, never was. The interruption is the narrative, the interrupter is the narrator". But one wonders how it is that Sarah knew the story all along, passed down through generations of women.

Audaciously inventive and humanely rich in its observation of emotional tumult, although just occasionally this slips over into "emotional literacy" speech rather than nuance, Jenny Diski has done her story proud. --Ruth Petrie

Review:

Excellent, sexy novel in which Abraham, Sarah and the voice of God perform a subversive, jealousy-laden dance round one another. It sounds unlikely, but Diski can spin gold from the most unpromising settings and characters, and this bookk delves into all kinds of byways - infertility, obedience, autonomy in a relationship - with wit and intelligence. (MARIE CLAIRE)

a hugely engaging and entertaining book (SUNDAY EXPRESS)

both intimate and ambitious - not only human, but also divine (DAILY TELEGRAPH)

This is Jenny Diski's best novel yet. (LITERARY REVIEW)

About this edition

• Publisher: Virago
• Publication date: 2001
• ISBN 10: 1860499147
• ISBN 13: 9781860499142
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224