Haunted by Christ : modern writers and the struggle for faith by Richard Harries. SPCK, 2019
£9.99 228 pages ISBN 978 0 281 079 346 also available as an ebook
The former Bishop of Oxford has written here about 20 modern writers, mostly British, in 15
chapters. The approach, in particular, is to examine what part Christian faith (or lack of it) played in
the life and the writing of the novelists, playwrights and poets featured here.
The book begins with Fyodor Dostoyevsky and finishes with Marilynne Robinson and, in between,
looks at Gerard Manley Hopkins, TS Eliot, Samuel Beckett,, WH Auden, William Golding, Graham
Greene, CS Lewis and Philip Pullman, Elizabeth Jennings, RS Thomas, Edward Thomas, Emily
Dickinson, Stevie Smith, Edwin Muir, George Mackay Brown, Evelyn Waugh,
Flannery O’Connor and Shusaku Endo.
If you know anything at all about Richard Harries – and he has many books to his name as well as
being a contributor to Thought for the Day on Radio 4 – you will not be at all surprised at his
incisive analyses of the works he deals with or the keenly perceptive comments about the lives and
religious convictions of the writers being studied.
A brief look at just a couple of the writers that Richard Harries puts under the microscope must
suffice to get a flavour of the book as a whole.
The contrast between CS Lewis and Philip Pullman is of interest not least because they clearly sit in
opposing camps so far as the Christian faith is concerned. In this regard, the fact that Richard
Harries is an ordained Anglican might suggest that he show some bias in favour of CS Lewis and
against Pullman. By no means. Not at all. The analysis and conclusions of and about these two
writers appears strictly even-handed. Fair and balanced is the verdict.
This approach to modern writers is more than helpful in giving a balanced insight into their literary
output as it has been influenced by their struggles to believe.
Perhaps the most attractive feature of Richard Harries’ writing in this work is the unsentimental
empathy that he shows to those about whom he writes. A man who loves the creative spirit and is
sensitive to spiritual battles for faith.
A great read.