Christian Fiction and Shadowmancer | Anita Mathias: Dreaming Beneath the Spires

Christian Literature, writing which compromises neither its literary quality nor its

message of comfort and edification is a rarity–a holy grail for those

of us who are both Christians and writers.

Lewis created it, and Tolkein, and Bunyan.

I read Shadowmancer by G.P. Taylor to Irene, then 8 and she was

gripped by it. I heard him speak at New Wine, and he is a charming and

hilarious speaker. It is well-constructed certainly, by the old

rules. Each chapter has a gripping climax, and you end it with your

heart in your throat. Irene can hardly bear for a chapter to end. All

the same, though the blurb calls it children’s fiction, children’s

fiction it most certainly is not.

There is a sense of evil, casual cruelty, menace, and threat that

disturbs my soul and its equilibrium The fate of noble Raphah, the

Christ-figure is almost too painful. What I do like a lot, even though it is

overt, is the casual quotation from Scripture. Taylor has

evidently immersed himself in it, which not all Anglican vicars, I daresay, have

and it spills forth, soothing the soul.

Good Christian fiction I can recommend includes Marilynne Robinson’s

“Gilead.” She has a good man, a truly good man, as a protagonist,

Reverend Ames. Not an over-wound, passionate Christian, he

is probably a Christian with a small c, but the goodness of the gospel

has soaked through him, He is decent, trustworthy, someone

for whom it would be an effort to behave badly. Christianity is so

woven into the fabric of his life that is what he is– a Christian

almost without any overt effort on his part, an “anima naturaliter

Christiana.” A naturally Christian soul!

“Peace like a River” by Leif Enger has another kind of Christian as a

protagonist. Jeremiah Land, like Reverend Ames is someone whose first

reaction is to pray (as it is increasingly becoming mine). When his

hothead son murders bullies who abused his little sister, we see

Jeremiah deep in prayer. Land is someone who experiences miracles as a

second language. Peace like a River is a startling, and successful

attempt to bring the miraculous into the realm and discourse of

contemporary fiction.