BOOK OF THE DAY
As a God Might Be by Neil Griffiths review – midlife crisis or the voice of God?
A man turns his life upside down in an ambitious, generous novel about the limits of faith and love
Lara FeigelSaturday 25 November 2017
I
n an insistently rational, middle-class world, how do you respond if God appears unexpectedly in your life? Proctor McCullough is a successful professional, albeit in an unusual field – an “atrociologist”, he advises the government on probable mass behaviour amid disaster. He is unusually happy with his partner, Holly, and is a devoted father to their six-year-old twins. He has never been interested in religion before, preferring to channel his spirituality into the appreciation of art: Fyodor Dostoevsky, Wallace Stevens, Mark Rothko, JS Bach. But suddenly he experiences an unmistakable call to ready himself for God. “He was being presented with a rent in the world’s fabric and needed to make himself available for a gift that might be passed through.”