By Adrian Plass
HarperCollins. 172 pages. £12.99
ISBN 0 551 03082 8
THE SACRED DIARY OF ADRIAN PLASS AGED 4 AND 3/4
By Adrian Plass
HarperCollins. 216 pages. £4.99
ISBN 0 551 03068 2
The editor approached me in a hush-hush sort of way at a heavyweight theological conference. 'Can you do these for me?' he whispered, passing me two volumes face down in a brown paper bag ... Hmmm.
The Father to the Man is a collection of seven short stories. The Sacred Diary is another volume in the spiritual-journal genre that has been so successful for Adrian Plass. He recounts the fictional ups and downs of himself, his family and his fellow Christians in a church set in a small town in the south of England.
As usual, Plass is strong on humour and pathos. This reviewer split his sides laughing at the Christmas circular newsletter ('Joshua has gained A grade GCSEs and nine spiritual gifts this year . . . please pray for his feelings of inadequacy'), and the reconstruction of what the disciples might have said on being asked to go out two-by-two ('Knoweth thou not what an scrip is? What an div!'). I shed a tear when the man who thought his faith was too weak found himself borne over to land safely on the other side.
As usual, I was in two minds about the boundary between humour and flippancy. I was also left feeling uneasy about the very low threshold of doctrinal expectation. In one story, the altar with its candlesticks seemed to represent some meaningful business with God, but then I don't think that I understood that one.
For me, enjoyable light reading. Neither should be used as theological source books. Of the two, the Diary was my favourite - on the other questions, let the reader decide.
