There’s a fish-in-a-barrel element to this, of course; the novel’s villain is Ben’s brother Jacob, who has become in the years of Ben’s wanderings the worst kind of narrow-minded, born-again preacher: bigoted, homophobic and inflexible.
In reaction, Ben emphasizes the holiness of love, which in his teaching turns out to mean limitless sexual partners of both genders, all the time. Few people would disagree with Ben’s rejection of the hatred and divisiveness that so often accompany religious dogma, but to counter that with an explicit mandate to start your engines for a rolling, never-ending orgy is its own kind of tyranny.
Exegesis aside, though, “The Final Testament” is a strong and absorbing piece of writing. Frey’s prose seems to have undergone a miraculous transformation of its own: The surly, stunted posturings of “A Million Little Pieces,” so one-dimensional and limited as to be close to parody, have been replaced by an exceptionally expressive range of voice.
The men and women who offer testimonies about their experience with Ben include doctors, cops, lawyers, priests, rabbis, drug addicts and homeless men, and they are almost all endowed with remarkable authenticity, their voices convincingly and realistically inhabited.
These variegated narratives, sketched with incisive psychological acuity, give “The Final Testament” its own weird integrity. Through these voices, Frey has made an honest attempt to follow the teachings of Jesus to their radical conclusions; in doing so, he has created a chronicle that, despite its contradictions, moves to its own inner spirit.
Lindgren is a writer and musician who divides his time between Manhattan and Pennsylvania.
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