Grace

Morris Gleitzman’s Grace is a first-person narrative that charts the struggles of a young girl coming to terms with her family’s membership of a theocratic religious sect. The kind of Christianity lived by this community is world hating, legalistic and ideologically bankrupt.

The story follows both Grace’s questioning of the separatist ‘True Path’ advocated by the elders of her church as well as her need to be part of the fallen, wider world. The strength of Gleitzman’s narrative comes in neither trying to philosophically undermine the basis of Christian faith nor dogmatically preach a more palpable form of Christianity. Instead, it is Grace herself – in name and deed – who is left to bear witness to the fact that deities, religions and devotees must live with, and in, the messiness of the world.