From The Sunday Times
April 4, 2010
The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ by Philip Pullman
The Sunday Times review by Nick Rennison 

“This is a story,” proclaims the back cover of Philip Pullman’s new book in large capital letters, as if already warding off potential complaints about it. And yet stories have got Pullman into trouble before. His Dark Materials, his wonderful fantasy trilogy, was interpreted by many fundamentalist Christians, particularly in America, as an assault on organised religion. There seems every likelihood that The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ, his retelling of the gospels, will land him in even hotter water. Talk of blasphemy has already been heard.

The difficulty, of course, lies with those people who insist that their stories sit still and behave themselves. Pullman, by contrast, prefers his to be livelier and more demanding. His version of the life of Jesus often follows the gospel story closely, but at its heart is a duality that the four Evangelists never recognised. When Mary is exiled from the inn to the stable and gives birth amid the beasts, she produces twins. One grows up to be the Jesus familiar from the Bible, a charismatic preacher proclaiming the imminence of the Kingdom of God who is eventually taken by the authorities and crucified. The other becomes Christ, a neurotic self-doubter who watches his brother’s career with fearful admiration and is tempted by a mysterious stranger to play his own significant part in the unfolding drama. Skulking in the background, tablet and stylus in hand to note down what is said and done, Christ becomes his brother’s biographer. And, like many biographers, he ends by inventing the life that he studies almost as much as he records it.
The full review at The Times online.

The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ 
by Philip Pullman
Canongate in UK, Text Publishing in NZ & Australia