![\"image](\"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/wp-content\/uploads\/2024\/01\/jan-26-book-fest.26.Mayoff-The-Island-Gospel-cover.jpg\")
<\/a>It is hard to describe simply the plot of The Island Gospel According to Samson Grief.<\/i> The title character is a middling artist who, when we meet him, is struggling to finish a painting. Outside his window, he has just seen \u2013 after a break of 13 years \u2013 three figments of his imagination. The Figs, as he calls them, present themselves in the forms of Judas, Fagin and Shylock, and they have returned with an important mission for Grief.<\/p>\n\u201cThe Supreme One,\u201d who the Figs represent, was impressed by Grief\u2019s scandalous, and most famous, painting of Prince Edward Island icon Anne of Green Gables as a Holocaust survivor, which Grief described in an interview as a statement \u201con the post-911 world we\u2019re living in, where nobody is safe anymore and the primary victim is the delusion of our collective innocence.\u201d Despite that Grief has not had much artistic or other success in the years since that painting \u2013 and that he is not actively involved in the island\u2019s Jewish community \u2013 the Supreme One wants Grief to build PEI\u2019s first synagogue. Once complete, the province will be consecrated as the new Promised Land, according to the Figs.<\/p>\n
Among Grief\u2019s many challenges \u2013 once he decides to take on the mission \u2013 is that the Supreme One has decreed that the synagogue must be built on a particular plot of land, a once-sacred place that has become a garbage dump and the focus of much political intrigue. It is hard to keep track of all the political manoeuvrings in this novel, but they sadly resonate, with some reality in their self-serving and unscrupulous nature.<\/p>\n
It takes Mayoff awhile to set up the many pieces of his narrative puzzle. The characters are numerous, and quirky only begins to describe them. The societal issues that arise as Grief tries to achieve his mission, the role played by the media \u2013 both conventional and unconventional \u2013 in what ends up happening, the reliability and unreliability of friendship and love \u2026 so many factors are up in the air and changing as the story progresses. Somehow Mayoff juggles them all in a way that allows readers to follow along, discovering various elements as Grief does, and losing our naivet\u00e9 as he does.<\/p>\n