The Good Man Jesus and the Scoundrel Christ
Philip Pullman
A nice fable, which is really more like the length of a story than of a book. Although Pullman’s feelings about religion are well-established (he strongly dislikes organized religion of any kind), and despite the title, I was pleased to find that “Christ” (the representative of the church) was in many ways a sympathetic character and “Jesus” (the representative of natural human spirituality) was often difficult to like.
There were a few cool moments of re-telling miracles from the Bible with non-supernatural explanations. Also, while in a way the “mysterious figure” in the book seems like he’s supposed to represent Satan, by the end I decided that, consistent with the rest of the book, he wasn’t supernatural at all, but just a person.