The Messiah of Morris Avenue

John Bedford Lloyd gets Hendra's darkly satirical Swiftian send-up of religious fundamentalism just right. What if America were a theocracy dominated by the Christian Right? What if televangelists and charismatic clergymen were more powerful than elected politicians, if Hollywood were "Holywood," and blasphemy were a crime? And, what if the Messiah came back as Jay, an Irish-Guatemalan kid from the Bronx whose "apostle posse" is made up of ex-gang-bangers and crack whores? Lloyd is wonderfully ironic as the disenchanted Johnny Greco, a nonbeliever and self-alleged Judas figure. As Jay, his voice is steady, quiet, reassuring, and as Jay's nemesis, Reverend Sabbath, Lloyd is sanctimoniously oily. Lloyd's performance offers an absorbing tale, right to its powerful, inevitable conclusion. S.J.H. (c) AudioFile 2006, Portland, Maine

May 1, 2006
Hendra's black-comic Christian fundamentalist dystopia is read with a straight face and a glint in the eye by Lloyd. Lloyd himself sounds like one of the masculinist preachers who run America in Hendra's tale of fundamentalism run amok, his deep leading-man's voice occasionally dropping to a shivery whisper implying forthright conviction. If Lloyd's reading occasionally stays at the same level, it is apropos for Hendra's novel, in which a formerly raucous free society has been dampened by a wet blanket of religious disapproval and smiley-face family values. Lloyd must balance the opposing forces battling in Hendra's story: the spirit-sucking forces of a rigorously fundamentalist society, and the energy of a reborn Christ, now a soft-spoken Hispanic healer. Lloyd's reading makes it clear that he gets the joke and does a fair job of transmitting some of Hendra's impassioned religious conviction as well. Simultaneous release with the Henry Holt hardcover (Reviews, Jan. 16).

January 16, 2006
In the near future of this alternately cynical and rapturous fable, America is a theocracy where the Christian Right, empowered by laws against blasphemy and witchcraft, controls everything from Congress to "Holywood" and foments Armageddon. Christ chooses this time to return in the guise of José, the Bronx-bred son of a Guatemalan immigrant with a discipleship of drifters and crack whores. Charismatic, open about his divinity and obliging with miracles, José wins over even Johnny Grecco, the jaundiced reporter who writes his gospel. Journalist Hendra, author of the best-selling Catholic- mentorship memoir Father Joe
and former editor in chief of Spy
, makes José the savior of liberal Christianity. José's theology is vaguely feminist (it includes "God the Mother"), vaguely Gnostic and just plain vague ("Blessed are the doubters..."), but he's militantly for love and tolerance and against war and creationism. Hendra writes a heart-wrenching Passion story, but the novel's broad satire—of both the Christian Right and of spineless liberal appeasers—clashes with the reverence accorded José and his New Agey platitudes (his evasion of the problem of evil is particularly mealy-mouthed). This messiah is an awfully nice deity, but he doesn't give our formidable world its due.