“You have been given the gift of tongues.” “I’m alive,” he said in a language he had never heard before. Biff arises out of a whirlwind of dust and the conversation between the two goes something like this: When Raziel asks, “Devil’s food?”, Stephan responds, “You can only eat so much white cake, my friend,” and so it is done.
Raziel doesn’t understand his orders – after all, Biff was “a bit of an asshole” – but “the Son is anxious that his whole story be told.” Before Raziel departs, Stephan asks that he bring back some chocolate, “a dirt-dweller’s snack” invented by Satan. The book begins with a prologue in which the archangel Stephan visits the archangel Raziel with a mission sent directly from “the Son” to resurrect “the Levi who is called Biff” in order for him to write his Gospel. In the interest of full disclosure, I’m Jewish, and cannot know how blasphemous, if at all, Christian readers will find the book, but as a coming of age story that presents a fictional look at Jesus’ life – mainly his formative years, which aren’t detailed in the Gospels – it’s interesting, damn funny, and for me, provided the most understandable explanation of the “Holy Spirit” that I’ve ever heard. While it won’t replace A Dirty Job as my favorite Chris Moore novel, it’s way up there, sitting side by side with Bloodsucking Fiends. He’s now in the middle of Lamb: The Gospel According to Biff, Christ’s Childhood Pal, and I can’t wait for him to finish so we can talk about it.
Just as naturally, I got to it before he did. Naturally I chose a book I thought he’d like, but one that I’d not yet read myself, so I could borrow it from him.
My husband gave me the rare opportunity of picking out a book for him to read before we went on a recent trip.
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