The Crucifixion and Resurrection of Malachi the Queer, by Damian Jay Clay

[Ulysses]

The Crucifixion and Resurrection of Malachi the Queer
By Damian Jay Clay
Published by the author, 2022
Five stars

Although there is a transcendent love story at the center of this book, it is not a romance. Although the book itself is a non-stop indictment of Christianity, its main parts are titled “Crucifixion, Harrowing, and Resurrection,” drawn from Christian theology. Although seemingly a young adult book, the narrator is a fifteen-year-old, with a boyfriend, who has been through more in his life than most adults could survive.

Given the section titles, it was no surprise that the word “harrowing” came to mind constantly. I suspect the author did his research and stitched together the pieces of the narrative from news and historical sources, which gives the entire work a feel of authenticity and the intense reality of a memoir. Fortunately, the book begins in a place that we soon understand to be at the end of the narrator’s tale, and so we can make it through Malachi’s story knowing that in the end he’ll be okay.

The younger child of the pastor of London’s largest evangelical Baptist church, Malachi is preternaturally smart. He has also survived cerebral meningitis and the loss of all memory from before his illness. He finds himself isolated and friendless due to his peculiarities. More problematic is his calm realization that he is both gay and an atheist. But Malachi manages. He has a plan. At thirteen he is already more academically advanced that most secondary school students. All he needs to do is keep his head down and make it to sixteen (the UK age of consent).

Well, that doesn’t work out. When his parents decide to send him to a conversion therapy camp in the English countryside, things begin to go horrifically wrong. We watch this brilliant boy struggle to maintain his identity in the face of tribulations worthy of the very Jesus he dismisses as a fictional god. Along his journey he meets people who will be his friends and advocates, and their loving, loyal presence leavens the harshness of the story. Malachi’s voice remains crystal clear throughout. He is our guide through his own personal hell. It is appalling to go through this with him, but we don’t want to let him out of our sight.

Personally, this book was deeply unsettling (as was the author’s intent). Malachi could be my grandson, and throughout the story I kept comparing his experience with my own – entirely opposite – experience from 47 years ago. Growing up in a liberal Republican (yes) family in the 1960s in the Northeast of the United States, I was raised Episcopalian, the American wing of the Church of England. The world of evangelical fundamentalism was as alien to me as it is central to Malachi’s life. My circumstances were incredibly lucky, although I didn’t understand it at the time.

The fact that a story like Malachi’s could be true today is sobering. It is important that we remind ourselves of the truth of the world around us, for all its positive changed. Damian Clay has not just written a compelling novel; he’s done us all a great service.