The Infidel: A Novel Based on the Life of John Newton

Aside from the fact that writing is miserably simplistic, and that this is not a novel but a poorly written biography, the characters do not come alive and neither does the story. As a believer who loves the hymn "Amazing Grace," I wanted and needed so much more from this book. As a literature teacher, I struggled to get past the overwrought yet underdeveloped writing because I wanted to know more about John Newton.

The problems are many. The author was uneven in his attempt to relay incidents in Newton's life that compel the reader to see how his conversion came about. The author was equally uneven in trying to probe the mind of a clearly brilliant Newton as he rejected God, and yet observed God continuing to work in his life. Squeamish about Newton's behavior as a man of licentious habits, the author treads with comically light steps over and around the very incidents which must be conveyed to understand why Newton saw himself as a "wretch." Either underinformed about or shockingly untouched by slavery, the author recreates Newton's own experiences as a slaver and as a "white slave" with either high melodrama or insufficient detail. In either case, Mr. Musser simply does not do any justice to Newton's developing revulsion of and toward his work. And why in the world was it so incredibly necessary for the author to belabor Newton's sluggard work habits, and in such a way that would be inappropriate for a junior high essay!

Even though Newton's relation with Polly is an important one, Musser glosses over that relationship as though he is equally afraid of talking about genuine love, and love that forgives. It is no small irony that Musser is unable to address profound emotional instances with anything more than either a standoffish approach as though he is too embarrassed by such emotion, or with a weirdly erratic voyeurism that pulls away really quickly after really details in a microscopic fashion. It is as though he longs to get to the details, but then backs away when he thinks he may be intruding or doing something wrong.

Musser spends a great deal of time talking about Newton's experience as a "white slave," and spends an ironically inordinate amount of time talking about how badly Newton was mistreated by a white slave trader and his black mistress. Some of this is done because it is necessary for a later part of the story, but it also seems to be out of balance with Musser's treatment of everyone's treatment of the slaves. Musser seems more horrified that a white man was treated in such an inhumane way than he is that white and black men traded goods for human beings, sold human beings, and were able to justify such sales.
The absolutely most frustrating thing about this miserable book is that is so remarkably uneven in its treatment of Newton's conversion. At some points Newton's vacillation between sin and conviction is treated with a sort of offhand approach, as though everyone would understand what it meant to be a man of profound sexual appetite and incredible disdain for authority and himself, and still think it somewhat curious that God would spare him, even though we are not given enough insight into Newton to understand why he would think that way.

After Newton's conversion, Musser spends some significant time addressing the outcomes not only of Newton's conversion but the consequences of his actions as a sinner, and does some minor justice to Newton's realizations. However, Musser is again painfully voyeuristic in a soap opera-like fashion as he develops Newton's part in the abolition of slavery. Again, Musser's apparent squeamishness in talking about the elements of Newton's life seem to interfere with his ability to tell Newton's story.
The most egregious problem with this novel is the end. After giving us page upon page of biographical tidbits or drivel, Musser gives us few pages that enable us to contemplate the profundity of the hymn "Amazing Grace," and mentions Newton's writing of it almost in passing!!!

If Joe Musser was unable or unwilling to do the research required to give accurate and even portrayals of John Newton's life, then his editors should have realized what literary pap they were foisting on the public, what kind of damage this sort of work might do to the perceptions non-believers have of current and historical believers as well as Christianity in its entirety. Newton's is a powerful and remarkable story. Too bad you won't be able to get a full sense of the man and God's redemptive work in his life through Joe Musser's abbreviated and pathetic treatment.


May be the worst book I have ever read   January 16, 2002
 5 out of 21 found this review helpful

This book is truly awful. The main character, John Newton, has huge changes of heart in the middle of sentences with little or no justifiable provocation. I want to escape Africa, wait, now I want to stay. I won't go whoring and drinking, oh, maybe I will. There is no god, well, I guess there is. I am an atheist, no I'm a Christian. These changes seem to come this quickly. This book is full of Christian dogma which the reader is expected to swallow as truth.

The characters are paper-thin and the master-centric view of slavery is one that was seen as shallow around the time of the Emancipation Proclomation. The author clearly knows little to nothing of eighteenth century Africa (this makes it the 1700's, not the 1600's - though I have never won a beauty pagent) and the description of life aboard a slaver, a very interesting and disturbing historical tragedy, is given little detail or attention. The only two interesting anecdotes in the novel are outright stolen from historical documents - a candle not being able to burn below deck in a slaver and a captive African child being eaten to death by rats.

Newton's redempton is utterly unconvincing, and his courtship of the love main interest, (when not raping slaves, though he eventually realizes that this is "just not right") Polly, is ludicrous. If you are a narrow-minded Christian who is looking for confirmation of your faith and you abhor the "heathens" and "savages" of Africa (with their non-Christian and therefore evil practices and beliefs), you might enjoy this. If you have an inquisitive brain and a respect and curiousity about diverse cultures and thoughts in the current and past world, you will find this book moronic and self-mockingly hilarious. I would call it dangerous, but it is so weak as to be benign. Burning this book would be a waste of a match....