The Second Coming by John Niven

To continue the theme of my post on Richard Herring's show about Jesus I'm now going to write about The Second Coming by John Niven. A blog-post that I wrote about his first book, Kill Your Friends, is one of the most read pages on this site

(http://drphunk.blogspot.com/2008/03/kill-your-friends-by-john-niven.html)

After being fairly brutal about the music industry in Kill Your Friends, Niven gives organised religion a fairly good kicking in this book. Jesus is portrayed in this book as a good man, the beloved son of God, who is sent down to America in the late twentieth century to save the world from the evils of Christianity. In this story, Jesus loves everyone and his only message is 'Be Nice'.

Lots of bad things happen to Jesus, just as they do in the Bible. Jesus does not conform to the norms of the society he lives in, just as is written in the Bible. However, I can imagine that some Christians will be upset by this book. It is actually a fairly decent story and it's all about being nice to people who are in a bad place and trying to understand other.

I would recommend this book to open-minded readers. In some ways it is a sequel to Kill Your Friends as the character of Steven Stelfox re-occurs. It also continues the tradition of small nods to music that I love (Shellac, Slint, Nirvana).

Niven has been criticised in the past from 'borrowing' dialogue from certain Glasweigan pop groups that are close to my heart but I did enjoy this.