Colm Tóibín's forthcoming novel may cause some controversy among traditional Catholics, as it challenges the familiar image of Mary as a docile, obedient mother.
Tóibín's last novel, Brooklyn topped the Irish best-seller lists, hit high positions in the UK and American sales charts and won the Wexford-born writer many new fans, with its compelling portrait of the young Irish emigrant Eilís Lacey. The book won the Costa Novel of the Year in 2009.
News came in April that Brooklyn will be partly shot in Ireland early next year after being optioned by English production company Wildgaze Films. In April, US actress Rooney Mara (The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo) was said to be "attached" to the project. Oscar-nominated English writer Nick Hornby (High Fidelity, Fever Pitch) has written the screen-play.
Tóibín's new novel, The Testament of Mary, will appear from Penguin books in October. In this challenging new interpretation, Mary, the Mother of God is presented as an older woman, living in exile and in fear in Ephesus, years after her son's crucifixion.
The authors of the Gospel provide her with food and shelter and visit her regularly, but she does not agree that her son is the Son of God. She tries to piece together the memories of the events that led to her son's brutal death. To her he was "a vulnerable figure, surrounded by men who could not be trusted."
Furthermore, Mary does not believe that Jesus' death was “worth it,” and is sceptical about the “group of misfits he gathered around him, men who could not look a woman in the eye.”
Mary also chastises herself for not staying at the foot of the Cross until her son died - in the Tóibín version, Mary flees Calvary to save herself. The actress Marie Mullen played Mary in Tóibín's one-woman play, Testament, which ran at the 2011 Dublin Theatre Festival.
