The Testament of Gideon Mack

Long-listed for the 2006 Man Booker prize, James Robertson’s novel The Testament of Gideon Mack (2006) concerns Edinburgh publisher Patrick Walker, who discovers Gideon Mack's manuscript, his “last testament,” comprising the main plot of the novel. Gideon Mack is given to be a Scottish minister in modern Scotland, whose doubt in God leads him, unexpectedly, to a face-to-face encounter with the devil. The story's epilogue, too, is presented as taking place outside the main plot; it is the report of the journalist who first makes the publisher of Mack's last testament aware of its existence. In the report, he interviews several people mentioned in the testament.

Gideon Mack is a “son of the manse,” a minister of the Church of Scotland. He lives in the fictitious coastal town of Monimaskit, Scotland, with Dundee to the south and Aberdeen to the north. His father before him was also a minister, a Calvinist, and a strict one; dutifully following in his footsteps, Mack became a minister, rather than an English teacher as he had originally planned (and trained for). Ministry is not, however, a great fit for him. Mack, rather atypically for a minister, does not believe in God—certainly not in the way suggested by his vocation. Not exactly a morally unimpeachable man, he largely neglects his wife Jenny and is having an affair with Elsie, his best friend's wife. Perhaps strangest of all, despite being a quite rational man overall, Mack is plagued by a persistent feeling that he is being watched, or even puppetized from afar—which odd feeling he connects with a spasm that comes and goes in one of his arms. Mack's doubts—about his career, his mental state, and his life choices generally—plague him. One day, while running after a fellow minister's runaway dog, he trips and falls into the infamous “Black Jaws,” a gorge at the bottom of which flows the Keldo River.

The local townsfolk assume him dead, but three days later, (rather like another well-known religious figure) he returns, claiming to have met the Devil himself. Mack claims that after falling into the Keldo, he was saved from certain death by the Devil, that the Devil mended his broken leg (although later stole his shoes), and that the two had a three-day-long, heartfelt discussion in an underground cavern about everything—including, among other things, how the Devil feels sorry for God, on account of the inconstancy of humankind's faith. Mack divulges the contents of the three-day discussion publically to his congregation, and they are immediately outraged and scandalized. Word of his blasphemy spreads like wildfire, and he is soon ostracized by all of Monimaskit, not to mention parodied by tabloids across Scotland. His church abandons him, and with few other options, Mack leaves town. Months later, his dead body is discovered atop the mountain of Ben Alder. The police investigate his murder, determining that Mack did not die of foul play, but killed himself. He leaves nothing behind him except for his mysterious manuscript: the account of his chat with the Devil.



After Walker receives the manuscript, he spends a long time debating whether to publish it. Mack's account of himself in his manuscript reveals a complicated man with ambivalent feelings toward his career, and a desire to do good thwarted by an inability to know how best to execute good. To satisfy his curiosity over Mack's story, as well as his mysterious and untimely end, Walker sends a reporter, Harry Caithness, to Monimaskit to interview Mack's former friends and acquaintances. Their responses are included in The Testament of Gideon Mack as the epilogue. Though short, the epilogue is one of the most pivotal parts of the novel, as it gives, for the first time in The Testament of Gideon Mack, third party views of Mack and his conduct. These accounts of events from Mack's life throw several of Mack's own accounts into question, revealing him to be an unreliable narrator. Just how unreliable, however, is left for the reader to determine. Was his meeting with the Devil supernatural fact, or a madman's insane fiction?

In some ways, James Robertson's The Testament of Gideon Mack is less about Gideon Mack himself, and more about the divide between appearances and essences—Mack disbelieved in God, but worked for years as a minister, and regularly raised money for charity. He preached moral values to his congregation, while guiltily breaking them at home. Though the novel never makes definitely clear whether his meeting with the Devil was, in fact, real, the effects of the meeting—particularly the social fallout Mack suffers in its wake—is real. Moreover, it kills him. The Guardian, too, notes the novel's concern for “duality,” comparing it to James Hogg's Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner and Robert Louis Stevenson's The Strange Case of Doctor Jekyll and Mr. Hyde.

Aside from his novels for adults, James Robertson is also one of the co-founders and general editor of the imprint Itchy Coo, which specializes in publishing children's books in the Scots language.