Bibliofreakblog

The Book of Q by Jonathan Rabb

As promised, I’m giving a review of a book that is both similar to and better than the Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown.  I’ve suggested other books in lieu of this travesty of fiction, but I realize that a lot of those books are not light, beach-friendly reading (the exception there being Lamb by Christopher Moore).  So, here is a review of The Book of Q by Jonathan Rabb, which uses many of the same tropes as Brown, but pulls it off so much better it gives you a little bit of hope for humanity.  And that’s what the book intends to do in the end, so good on him.

Yes, there is the whole boy meets girl crap.  Yes, a mysterious manuscript falls into the hands of a priest.  Yes, this is a cult-like conspiracy passed down orally through the generations.  Yes, the Church wants it silenced.  Yes, it is implausible, and historically inaccurate at the end.  Yes, there is mad dashing around the churches and ruins of Europe.  Yes the bad guy behind it all is predictable. 

Wait, maybe this book does suck…

No, it’s O.K.  The characters, perhaps because they meet during wartime Bosnia, I’m not sure, are more well rounded than the usual set found in the pulp genre.  True, the main character is a priest who must struggle with his feeling about a woman, but it comes off with a certain amount of believability, though certainly it is thrown in there to offer jealousy and sexiness among the characters.  

I must warn, coming from four years studying Comparative Religion in college, and a lifetime of armchair history and theology, that this whole Manichaean thing is bull.  Rabb can’t even seem to keep his dates right.  If you are curious about it, Wikipedia has a fairly good synopsis of the Manichaeans.  

However, it’s a charming book, despite all that.  And a much happier message than the Da Vinci Code.

The writing isn’t that bad either.  The dialogue isn’t rigid.  At times it’s even funny.  Seduction is slow, and calculated (depending on the who and when and why and how), rather than burst of Hollywood fornication.  The characterizations still come out somewhat hurriedly, but in the case of minor characters that’s O.K., and often illuminates the main characters, which is sort of a version of show don’t tell.  For example, we learn more about Father Ian Pearse, our dashing protagonist, through his memory of being with his older brother:

“‘This is fucking freezing, Padre.’  It was Jack’s little joke.  The Padres had been the one team to show any real interest in Pearse during college.   Jack liked the irony.  Less so the old water.  ’You get on a plane and you finder her.  Trust me.  Situation solved.’  Jack had a way of spelling things out for you.  Ever since his two younger brothers had eclipsed his more than respectable six-foot-even, Jack had asserted his primacy in other ways.  The words trust me were a favorite.”

The reason I like this paragraph is that it comes in the beginning of the book, when we know that Pearse has not chosen to go after his beloved, and to enter the priesthood instead.  This memory reflects upon that decision, and his character in making that decision.  A couple paragraphs before, Pearse remembers that his parents also encouraged him to go back and find his love in Bosnia.  But despite this, an despite the doubt he feels in his heart for his calling now, he chose the priesthood.  Also, it is clear that to Pearse things are not cut and dry.  They cannot all be spelled out.  These few lines, along with many other small passages carry a lot of weight in molding the character.  

So, yes, maybe we don’t just want to be told that Ian’s brother Jack has a problem with being the oldest but shortest, and yes, maybe we’d rather see him say “trust me” three times in one scene instead of being informed that this is a key saying, and yes, maybe this could be done by stretching out the scene, but because it illustrates a point about Pearse’s character, and nobody cares about his brother, cutting such corners allows the reader not to get bored, while still holding on to the author’s art.  

Rabb is no Umberto Eco, but then again, who is?  Dan Brown sure as hell isn’t.
Buy The Book of Q on Amazon

If you like this book/author, you might like:

(my reviews in blue)

The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
Foucault’s Pendulum by Umberto Eco
The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown
Angels & Demons by Dan Brown
The Egyptologist by Arthur Phillips
Living Buddha, Living Christ by Thich Nhat Hanh
Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography by John Dominic Crossan
Lamb by Christopher Moore
The Gnostic Gospels by Elaine Pagels
Thou Art That by Joseph Campbell
The Great Transformation: The Beginning of Our Religious Traditions by Karen Armstrong
The Bible: A Biography by Karen Armstrong
The Thorn Birds by Colleen McCullough
The Third Jesus by Deepak Chopra
The Angel is Near by Deepak Chopra and Martin Greenberg
People of the Book by Geraldine Brooks

Other works by Jonathan Rabb:

The Overseer
Shadow and Light
Rosa