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The image on the Shroud: The novel raises the question of whether the physical body of Christ or anybody else is the essential spiritual self. If you could bring the body back, would you want to? Would it matter? Would you be stuck with an avatar with no content? Rich questions that get lobbed at us with such inattention to dramatic detail that it's hard to give a damn when the answers finally come.If you have friends who come over to deliver long-winded speeches about science and religion, you'll relate to the characters in The Shroud, by Steven and Michael Meloan, a book that will serve nicely when you cannot get your hands on somebody to lecture you on transcendence and materialism.

Personally, it wasn't until very late in the book that I cared whether any of the characters tripped on a door-stop and died or not, and if from time to time I nodded at some insight from a character, I found myself wishing it had been delivered by somebody else.  Anybody else.

The book revolves around a stodgy and brilliant but unlikable atheistic genetic scientist, Robert Strickland, who pontificates at (and is pontificated at by) his religious colleague and friend, Jordan Randall.  The pair is charged by the Vatican with analyzing the blood-stains on the Shroud of Turin at the genetic level and determining whatever can be determined from genetics (which as you know is quite a lot).

For reasons that are never made entirely clear (notwithstanding long pedantic speeches about "tribalism" and "dogma"), hordes of religious people react violently to the news that genetic scientists are analyzing the blood on the Shroud of Turin.   Fundamentalists (and even conservative breakaway Episcopalians!) are part of the legion of violent reactionaries who drive Strickland and hot journalist Sara Bender underground into the dark underbelly of genetic research, carrying precious DNA sequence data of one who might be Jesus Christ.

The novel really is an excuse for the authors to unload a lot of sermons, though it's not really always clear what questions they're addressing or why those questions are especially urgent.  When Jordan Randall shows reluctance to move forward with research on the Shroud, there's lots of talk about how science doesn't always know what the consequences of its researches will be; but you have to supply the real conflict yourself.  

What is the great difficulty supposed to be, here?  A few Protestants and some shady Catholics in the Vatican basement who (literally) can't work a computer are given a few pages in which to do a few menacing things (mostly on the telephone) because they don't want Jesus to be cloned: but it's unclear when Protestants got a jones for protecting the bloodstains on a Roman Catholic relic, and it's hard to whip up much belief that cloning Shroud-blood would threaten the established order.  And certainly the dialogue of fundamentalists in the book is tone-deaf to the way fundamentalists really think and feel: in one scene a television pastor is bested in debate by Randall and sputters, "How dare you!"  No, they don't talk that way: they're ready to put you in your place.

It seems no character is without a tract to deliver on Science and Faith and The Nature of Transcendence.   When they come, they're embarrassingly badly written and obscure the characters.  Consider this molten conversation between Sara Bender and Strickland as they walk on a beach together:

"Compelling analogy," she agreed.

"The conundrum of consciousness and self-awareness is equally mysterious," Strickland continued.  "Many theorists have proposed that with sufficient networking and processing power, future supercomputers will somehow become sentient, capable of looking out at the world with a sense of wonder, pathos, pain, and love."

Those crazy kids.  Somebody do a hand-check.NOTE: This book is not a handbook for cloning from blood on artefacts. It just gives you a little bit to think about when you're talking about it with a bunch of guys in the dorm on a slow Friday.

The personnel marshaled to deliver these slabs of dialogue lifted from science text-books are so unlike anybody we want to hang out with, so unlikable, so one-dimensional, that it might have been a little nicer to have read a doctrinal statement.

And one appears near the end of the book, put not in the mouth of a likable character, because there aren't any, but on a website Strickland reads.  It's got lots of nice stuff: feminism, environmentalism, the sanctity of the Internet, universal brotherhood, genetics, quantum theory, gravity... you can read it here.

But these mouthpieces are set up as spokespeople for points of view (some of which are rather difficult to imagine anybody really holding), not well-realized characters.  Their motivations are blurry and ill-defined, and the lack of sympathy this creates cripples the book.   

Technically, I guess the authors told us why the characters do the things they do... but motivation is tucked in like data-points, not as a firm connection between reader and character.  (And in a book about the genetic code that largely makes us what we are, this misunderstanding about simple issues like "sympathy" and "empathy" and what actually makes us care is doubly damning.  The authors should examine David Brooks' The Social Animal to discover more about how we really come to engage with one another, and with fictional strangers.)  Strickland had some rough moments in childhood, we are told, and so likes his materialistic worldview just fine.  But then he makes decisions based rather suddenly on an epiphany involving some fish and a bit of refracted light.  (He changes his mind later.  No idea why.  Don't ask.)   Those decisions should be critical to the plot: but they aren't.  He changes his mind mainly because the authors need to get things moving, but nothing really personal or emotional seems to hang on his choice, and nothing really seems to motivate it: Strickland doesn't develop, he converts, and his motivations remain mysterious.

Similarly, Sara has a semi-satisfying relationship with an investment banker that belies the arch feminism of the novel's final synthesis: and though she is bright, she is, we are told, helpless to hold on to her anger when confronted with red roses.  Whew.  The description of Strickland and Sara's lovemaking when it comes searches the soul of man and woman, and has the added advantage of cutting short another speech on transcendence:

"It's funny," she said.  "I've been feeling the same way lately.  I -- "

Before she could finish, Strickland took her in his arms and kissed her.  He pulled off her windbreaker and then his own.  Bender wrapped her arms around his neck, and they sank slowly down into the sand.

She might be ticked about not getting to finish her speech: Strickland got several pages of yacking in before this passionate frisbee zinged in over the surf.  But he can always send her flowers.

The novel does deal with some serious themes, notably one explored more ably in Carl Sagan's Contact: the relationship between science and human imagination and spirituality.  (Indeed, the basic narrative pattern lovingly and consciously imitates Sagan's book: earthshaking discovery produces global anxiety, leading to violence and a synthesis of science with spirit.)

It also argues that our natural tribalism now crushes the human story and has ceased to be a tool for our survival.

It's an evangelical book for its own synthesis of science and spirituality, and like all evangelical books it's more concerned with polemics than with real art.  It understands themes and not the world of our hearts; it affirms speeches but not people who speak them.  It loves both science and spirituality with a pedant's preference for conversion.

Towards the end (much more than half way through), a few scenes that took a stab at being thrilling were quite readable before the thing dissolved again into a messy, uncomfortable catechism for "Neotericism," as the novel's new spirituality is called.  

In connection with which I should just say that the word "Neoteric" comes from a school of Greek poetry that rejected sweeping epics and paid attention to the small details of everyday life.  It would have been well if The Shroud had cared less about preaching global messages and more about the preachers that it misunderstands and cannot make the reader care about.  If cloning Jesus leaves us with an empty avatar that must remain distinct from his message, The Shroud leaves us with a message that's somehow uneasily divorced from the drama that was supposed to give it a bodily form.

Touch it not, for it has not yet descended to the realm of the real earth.