She flees the crucifixion scene before her son has died, and does so, she confesses, because it was “her own safety thought of.” Tóibín seems to strive for emotional fidelity: How might it actually have felt for Mary to witness her son’s trajectory? To Tóibín’s Mary, Christ and his disciples aren’t the varnished figures you’d see in a da Vinci painting instead, they’re awkward, slightly unruly outcasts-more like a group of gangly, cargo-shorted teens who skipped the Homecoming dance to go cliff-jumping at the quarry. Unlike the pure, meek woman found on votive candles, this Mary is empowered, and above all, honest. Tóibín’s premise, then, is to turn to Christ’s mother to get the straight story. By her account, Christ’s most well-known acts were far from providential, and Mary herself isn’t as demure as myth would have it: Halfway through the book, she threatens two disciples at knifepoint.
Mary relates some of Christ’s most well-known plot points-the raising of Lazarus, turning water to wine, the crucifixion-all the while waxing nostalgic on simpler days, back when her son wasn’t The Son. Testament is Mary’s actual version of events, the more earthly side of the story that her visitors refuse to write down. It is recorded years after the crucifixion, when disciples are visiting her regularly, eager to collect tidily divine stories as fodder for the Gospels. Testament is Mary’s first-person account of watching her son turn from a child into a revered godhead. An African Writer Who Doesn't Mind Being Called an 'African Writer'
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