"Our passions are wild beasts: God grant us the strength to muzzle them." (p.53)

After the barrage of publicity surrounding James Robertson's latest offering, including inclusion in Richard and Judy's book club(!), this review comes rather as an afterthought, but this intriguing novel still warrants some more attention.

‘The Testament of Gideon Mack’ is a skilfully designed mystery that grips the reader and surprises at every turn. Robertson uses traditional themes and form, but moulds them into a modern novel very much about the here and now. The book not only explores the main character's personal struggles with religion, morality and the strength of his passions, but also documents how Scotland's culture has changed over the past fifty years or so. In doing this Robertson has created a novel that will linger in the reader's mind for a long time after the last page.

For many readers the way the book is written will be immediately familiar, as it follows the tradition of the artificial memoir, most heavily drawing of course on James Hogg's ‘The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner‘. The structure of the novel comes directly from Hogg, and it also deals with similar themes of religion, the supernatural, psychology and the devil. Hogg's echoes, combined with references to Stevenson and many historical figures add tremendously to the novel's sense of history. This continuity of theme and form causes the reader to have certain expectations, but it is these expectations that bring unexpected revelations at every turn of the page.

The book's main character, Gideon Mack, is, in complete contrast to Hogg's character, an agnostic. Unlike for instance his friend Catherine Craigie, who is completely comfortable with her sceptical view of life, Gideon becomes increasingly more uncomfortable with the way he leads his life. Despite not believing in God, he faces severe pressures caused by religious elements in his life, pressures that perhaps cause him to become mentally unstable. His father, who was a minister, brought him up to believe in God and to not let his emotions lead him, maybe because this had enabled his father to deal with the horrors of the war. But Mack, perhaps because he does not believe in God, while at the same time not trusting his own instincts, finds his own emotions increasingly difficult to deal with. Despite his supposedly liberal views, he appears to agree with his father's suggestion that happiness is "[…]but a flicker of a match in the vast expanse of God's creation" (p.118), or at least that bliss is not the main aim of life.

Instead of following his instincts and becoming a teacher, he becomes a minister like his father, and instead of pursuing the woman he loves he marries 'second best'. As he says himself: "But if there was a raging passion waiting to be released in me I did not let it out. I kept myself clamped down." (p.112) It is only in the acting up of his left arm, the left which is historically associated with the devil, that we can see that he cannot totally control his passions.

Mack's wife Jenny is the first to realise that he cannot live his life like this, and indeed that she cannot live like this. She feels that his whole life is a lie, and indeed that their life together is also a lie. At times you really want to shake the young minister and make him face up to his demons, and simply go and enjoy the life he has. But with reference to the quote above this article; he does indeed 'muzzle the wild beasts within'. As his wife's best friend, and Gideon's later lover, Elsie says in the epilogue: "He wasn't capable of loving her or me or anybody, including himself. He'd had that terrible upbringing that strangled love at every turn." (p.383) Gideon cannot simply enjoy life, because he still lives with the fears his father's Calvinist upbringing instilled in him. But, especially after the death of Jenny, he finds it ever more difficult to tame his passions. And perhaps because he does not believe in God or in fact himself, they eventually take control, either rendering him mad or susceptible to the Devil's charms.

And when he meets the Devil, after falling into an chasm called the Black Jaws, the devil tells him to "[…]CUT THE FUCKING GAMES" (p.281) It is only after that that Gideon truly realises that he needs to address his feelings and needs to start to be honest with himself, and others. His truthfulness is not appreciated however, and after being ostracised he finally decides to take his life to be with the devil. Some commentators have suggested that the devil in the novel is a disappointing figure, and undeniably they have a point. Yet they have missed completely what Robertson is illustrating; it is precisely the devil's uninspiring appearance that illustrates not only Mack's feelings about religion, but indeed Scotland's or the world's. As the devil explains: "[T]he world doesn't need me. It's going to hell on a hand-cart … without any assistance from me." (p.295) People do not believe in him anymore, and therefore he has diminished into the figure he is in the novel. Similarly the devil suggests that he has not seen God in a long time, and in fact he "… reckon[s] he's gone…" (p.295) The dialogues that Gideon has with the devil, or indeed the monologues that he listens Satan preaching, once again echo Gideon's own feelings, and precisely all the problems he has been struggling with.

These conversations can be seen as either actual, or all in Gideon's mind; is he mad or does the devil actually exist? This duality is unmistakably a traditional theme, which again goes back to Hogg and Stevenson. Throughout the book hints are dropped to suggest that the two are in fact one. Robertson gives the reader these two ways of reading the book, either reading it as a psychological novel or a supernatural one. And because the narrator is completely unreliable, especially after the reader has read the interviews with the other protagonists in the epilogue, the ambiguity remains even after finishing the book and for days after reading it the mind wonders, making the novel a captivating read.

‘The Testament of Gideon Mack’ is a fascinating book by a great storyteller, incorporating traditional form and themes, while at the same time being refreshingly different. It shows that religion is still very much a modern theme. Robertson suggests that religion still has a deep impact on the present, and Gideon's struggles could be seen as a reflection of Scotland's inability to move away from its religious past perhaps as quickly as it would like. On a purely superficial level moreover Robertson serves up an excellent mystery that makes the mind boggle. I highly recommend it.