Books: Review - Jubilate by Michael Arditti

Published: 27 January, 2011
by RUTH GORB

Novelist Michael Arditti talks about keeping the faith in the face of the commercial and ‘showbiz’ aspects of Lourdes 

THE name triggers a sort of unease. “Lourdes,” you say. “The place in south-west France where miracles happen?” The reaction may be one of embarrassment, scepticism, even nervous laughter. Or belief. It is impossible, however, to discount the six million visitors to Lourdes every year – six million people hoping for a miracle.

The writer Michael Arditti, an old hand after three pilgrimages, says he bets he is the only novelist who has written a love story set in Lourdes. In fact, he says, his new book is the only literary novel set in Lourdes since Zola had a bash at it in 1894 – which is extraordinary when you consider the intrinsic drama of the place: the passion, the tragedy, the heightened atmosphere, the enormous expectations of the people who go there.

What made Arditti want to go for it? It was the challenge of a real setting – one he had been part of – and a cast of remarkable characters. 

“We’re fascinated by pilgrimages,” he says. “We all know something about Chaucer. Why a love story? Because love has been at the centre of life and literature for ever.”

The lovers in his story are Vincent, who has joined the Jubilate pilgrimage to make a documentary film on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of the shrine to St Bernadette, and Gillian, a woman in search of a miracle cure for her brain-damaged husband. 

Their mutual attraction  is instant, passionate and fraught with difficulty. Gillian’s husband, Richard, is childlike and demanding. She is a believer, while Vincent certainly is not. Their affair and their soul-searching is conducted against a company of characters as varied as Chaucer’s Canterbury pilgrims.

Many of them are, by definition, disabled, as is Arditti. He calls it “a minor disability”, but that is probably since he went to Lourdes. “Yes, it gives me pain, and it makes me tetchy, and I want to say, ‘Why me?’ You have only to meet people in a much worse situation, as I did at Lourdes, to say ‘Why not me?’ Then you see life as a gift rather than a right.”

Meet him in his elegant flat overlooking Primrose Hill and you see a tall, well-built man. But walking is painful, the stairs to his flat increasingly difficult. 

It happened 10 years ago: he ate some unpasteurised goats’ cheese which set up an infection and destroyed two discs at the base of his spine. 

“It thrust me into middle age,” Arditti says, “because the first thing people see when they meet me is a stick. Thankfully I can write. And it may sound pious but there are people so much worse off. Being able to say, ‘Why not me?’ is one of the advantages of having faith.”

Yes, he always has had faith, although it may have wobbled a bit when he was in his 20s. He sees it as an enormous gift because “one is not afraid of so many things”.

He went on his first pilgrimage because of his disability – he wanted the strength to carry on. And he went because of his faith; you have to have faith when you think that in 150 years there have been only 67 accredited medical miracles 

Arditti takes on board all the doubters: Vincent, his central character, is the voice of all non-believers when he asks why miracles are not visible – why, for instance, an amputee does not grow a new leg. “There are,” says Arditti, “all sorts of miracles.”

He is very aware of  the showbiz aspect of Lourdes – the shops are part of the enormous commercial area – and there are apparently more hotels there than anywhere else in France other than Paris. 

The area devoted to St Bernadette’s shrine is even more vast: “acres of Disneyfied churches and chapels, conference centres.” 

How does a man of Arditti’s sensitivity find any sort of comfort there, enough to make him go back three times?

“What made it bearable for me was the people,” he explains. “Yes, there is an element of playing on people’s credulity, and I really do not like seeing comatose people on drips being wheeled in processions – but it is still inspirational. 

“It has an aura of faith, hope, altruism, physical courage. The real miracle is that it gives people the strength to carry on – as it did for me. 

“The generosity of the people who go to help – all volunteers, and a lot of them are very young – is remarkable.”

They are all there in his book – the helpers, the tetchy disabled, the terminally ill. It is heartbreaking, often funny, certainly unlike any other love story. 

It is published, he says, in time for Valentine’s Day: “After all, what happens to Vincent and Gillian is a sort of miracle.”

• Jubilate. By Michael Arditti. Arcadia Books £11.99