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Rating: “The Second Coming” by 45-year-old Scottish author John Niven was originally published in 2011, while it came out for us only a year later with Einaudi.
Alright, I'll be brief even though the little novel consists of a good 381 pages.
It tells the story of the return of the messiah, whom we find already 32 years old, wandering around New York as a guitarist/singer in a rock trio, juggling odd jobs and gigs here and there...
The curtain rises in heaven with God returning after a week (which corresponds to several of our centuries) of trout fishing and being updated by the secretary on the latest happenings on our semi-devastated planet, as we all well know, those of us who are not blindfolded, and He doesn’t take it exactly philosophically, so much so that He decides to send our good Jesus back down here to clarify the words of the father.
There is no shortage of profanity (in the style of ehm, cialtronius, or Ribaldo if anyone knows what I mean...) nor a list of great song titles that act as a soundtrack to the story almost until the last page.
The son of God more or less retraces a déjà vu but modern or contemporary, crossing America seeking fortune and founding a “commune” in the company of the “last ones” until provoking the wrath of a preacher son of a preacher who isn't very pleased with the good news put into practice by example from this poor Christ.
Oh yes, I promised to be brief, and so it shall be, in heaven there are encounters with characters known to us, first among all Jimi Hendrix, a dear friend of Jesus with whom he shares strummed chords and joints of higher quality weed than the best we have here on our planet...
And that's it, the story denounces the ills of our century, trying to promote the idea that the only remedy lies in God's single, very difficult (for us) commandment, which is “Be Good”...
p.s. There are also visits to hell with a semi-satisfied Lucifer acting as our guide.
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