The Book of Joby
by Mark Ferrari
Tor Books, 2007; trade pb; 638pp
ISBN: 0-7653-1753-2
I’m giving this book for Yule, so any relatives reading now picked a bad time to stop ignoring me.
The Book of Joby takes its title, and general pattern, from the Biblical Book of Job. God once again agrees to let Lucifer test a man’s faith by oppression, frustration, and disappointment. Creation hangs in the balance.
And yet the book takes place solidly on a human level. Joby and his family, friends, and acquaintances are real people living lives we recognize in a world we know all too well. Naturalism combines with breathtaking descriptions of incredible scenery to ground the story in a setting as vivid as a documentary. Ferrari’s artistic eye — he made his living once doing spectacularly detailed fantasy art — is evident throughout.
Further, his puckish humor and satirical insight into people raise this sly take on a hoary plot to delightful heights even while plunging its characters into devastating depths.
Ultimately redemption comes, for each in his or her own way.
Some reviews of this book have misled, either by incomplete readings, or through misinterpretation. It gleaned both praise and warning from secular humanists and fundamentalist religionists alike. Both extremes found many details of The Book of Joby objectionable in some picky way or other, even as they enjoyed finding such quibbles.
That Ferrari’s first novel reaches so adroitly across genre lines, even appealing to mainstream readers who generally avoid fantasy or imaginative literature, speaks volumes about its literary strengths.
While there is a Christian gloss, or, more properly a Judaeo-Christain mythic gloss, especially when God, various saints, and the devil are concerned, one should think more Twain than Revised Standard Version. And it is Mark Twain without the bitterness, but with an Arthurian framework encompassing and interweaving Celtic, Native American, and other traditions. The Book of Joby mixes and balances a wide range of references. It stands toe-to-toe with the best of Peter S. Beagle, and accomplishes what Neil Gaiman’s American Gods aimed at but failed to reach. It makes the mythic believable, and the everyday mythic.
Have you read all the Potters? Have you read The Innkeeper’s Song by Peter S. Beagle; Prince Ombra by Roderick MacLeish; Mainspring by Jay Lake; Needful Things by Stephen King; The Man That Corrupted Hadleyburg by Mark Twain? All those and many others ring in one’s head while reading The Book of Joby, which parallels them all in ways Joseph Campbell would have recognized in his thesis of the Hero With A Thousand Faces. There is a groundswell of modern storytelling bearing a new appraisal of ancient myth, and The Book of Joby epitomizes this manifestation of old-into-new.
And yet The Book of Joby remains Ferrari’s own original work, and that is due as much to his touch with naturalism — itself an adjunct of his vivid descriptions — as with his focus on genuine people. No cardboard cutouts in the lot. There is a constant tone of a writer tapping into real people, relationships, and events, but imbuing them with a bard’s enhanced resonance. He manages to keep what are essentially mythic archetypes as real as anyone’s uncle, cousin, brother, or teacher.
We watch Joby grow from a little boy with a huge imagination into a harried, oppressed man with little going for him, trapped in a world much larger than he can see. We then watch as he finally regains his vision, and his role, and triumphs in a way both surprising and satisfying. It is a remarkable ending to an amazing book, and compulsively readable throughout.
The pacing is brisk and consistent and it is neither over- nor underwritten; Ferrari’s language matches his multileveled subject matter well, yet never becomes flowery, dense, or confusing. And the Heavenly, and Hellish, interludes are gems of ironic humor, with the devilish ones in particular full of details recognized from all-too-many pent-up control freaks, martinets, televangelists, and social bullies. The comedy in these sections is telling, like the droll sardonicism of Ambrose Bierce, John Collier, or Frederic Brown. Example: One of Satan’s main motives is to have humanity obey more strictly all of God’s rules.
Those who found The Book of Joby unrelentingly grim failed to see the joy and humor throughout. They are probably literalists. Those who found it to be fluff failed to see the gut-wrenching human aspects, always portrayed with dignity. They are probably sociopaths. Ferrari is at home with metaphor and as compassionate an artist as America has produced; he respects beliefs and actions, ideals and realities, and even humanity itself.
Respect radiates through this book, which is perhaps the main reason its spirituality is neither saccharine, as is too much of what passes for sacred these days, nor sanctimonious, as with too many works of self-proclaimed piety. This is not aimed at the Left Behind crowd, as if excluding others somehow might elevate a small group, but certainly that crowd would benefit from absorbing the open-minded warmth The Book of Joby offers, which is a legitimately tolerant view of both the noumenal and the phenomenal.
And that’s why I’m giving this book as a gift this year; it is a great story, it is fun to read, and it leaves one with a sense of elevated hope that doesn’t feel unrealistic regardless of what kind of person you are. What better thing can one present over the holidays, or any other time of any other year?
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