The Good Man Jesus is a fascinating story, told in the same kind of spare, lapidary prose as the Gospels themselves or a Grimm brothers fairytale. Pullman's gift for storytelling is in evidence on every page. For what it's worth, in case any Christians are out there pulsating with rage already, in the same way that His Dark Materials made me pick up Blake and Milton (two of his poetic sources), The Good Man Christ has sent me rushing back to the Gospels. I read Matthew over my lunchtime soup, ready to see with new eyes these fascinating and often startling documents.
