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The idea of the book is that the fictional Adrian Plass has decided to resume his diary, charting a few months in the course of his life as a Christian speaker. His first entry is during a sermon at his church, when his mind is wandering. He mentions that he has been invited to several events over the course of the next few months. He’s still working in an office, but many of the events are at weekends, and he has plenty of annual leave to use up. So he hopes to be able to agree to most of them.
Inevitably many of the diary entries focus on Adrian’s family: the fictional Adrian is married to Anne, and they have just one son, Gerald. This book is set eight years after the original ‘Sacred Diary’, so Gerald is now in his mid-twenties. Although we learn that he had moved out, he’s now back in the family home for a few months. Gerald still makes puns and satirical jokes, and he’s started re-writing bits of Scripture for modern audiences, taking more than a little artistic licence to make a point. He’s writing a lot and going for walks on his own, and Adrian is getting a bit concerned about him.
Adrian’s church features too. The pastor, Edwin, is still there, and he’s a wonderful creation. Edwin is full of wisdom and intuition. He loves all his congregation, and knows how to deal with each one, without causing anger or offence. He has a sense of humour too, and a strong sense of his own fallibility. I liked Edwin very much.
Edwin organises a support group to pray for Adrian as he does his many talks. It’s a bit of a mixed bunch, mostly Adrian’s friends. Leonard Thynn, a strange person who often misunderstands what’s going on, is nonetheless devoted to the Plass family. Richard and Doreen Cook are overly ‘religious’ and appear to be lacking a sense of humour. And there’s a new, rather fluffy lady who keeps offering the same piece of ‘wisdom’, over and over…
I love these books so much. I find them inspiring, encouraging and thought-provoking. They’re also very funny. I laughed aloud more than once, even at events or discussions that I recalled as they came up. Adrian Plass (the real one, who wrote the books about the fictional Adrian keeping a diary) is a very talented writer. He puts his faults and quirks on display in his other books, and, albeit in caricatured form, in the fictional Adrian’s personality in these books.
I suspect that this book was intended to be a kind of finale to the earlier three books. It has that kind of feeling about it. Several threads are nicely tied up; we learn what Gerald’s future is to hold, and what he has been pondering about so long. We discover, too, what happens to Adrian’s bête noire in his office, Everett Glander.
As well as that, we get insights into the world of a Christian speaker, both positive and negative - and, I suspect, mostly realistic. We even learn why Leonard Thynn kept borrowing the Plass family cat in the first book...
I’m happy that the author didn’t stop at this, after all. There are two more ‘Sacred Diary’ books written some years later, which I will be rereading over the next few months. But my recollection is that, good though they were, they didn’t live up, quite, to either this one or the original ‘Sacred diary’ trilogy.
I would definitely recommend this book if you have read the earlier ones. Having said that, if you’re not a Christian and have no experience with the church or Christian meetings, you might find them rather bewildering. If you’re a strict fundamentalist, at the other extreme, you might find them shocking, and think they’re heretical.
But for the ordinary believer-in-the-pew, who loves God and would like to love other people even if they’re rather annoying, I would recommend this very highly. It stands alone but is definitely best read after the first ‘Sacred Diary’ book, and preferably the other two as well.
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