I finished The Butcher of Nazareth and I have so many things to say about this beautiful, horrifying book. This book is a five-star read for me. However, with full sincerity, it is very much not going to be for everyone.

I'm going to do something I rarely do and put trigger warnings down so people know what to expect: child loss, blood, gore, religion, violence, pregnancy.

Okay. Now that that's out there, all I want to do is talk about this book. David Scott Hay wrote something unreal. Wholly original. I've never read anything like it in my life. This story is a prequel to the New Testament, told between the Old Testament before Jesus becomes Jesus.

We follow The Butcher who was a participant in the Culling ordered by King Herod. We follow the Butcher through his pain and agony, the death of his infant son, his isolation from his family, his loss of self in his fury and rage. We see the Butcher and his anger at God, his hatred of Jesus, his resentment of faith. Along the way, it's the Butcher who plants the seeds for the death of Jesus in his search to find him and cull the only babe who escaped when his infant son did not.

The Butcher copes with his son's death, his resentment at Jesus for not suffering the same, and the way the world was changing around religion for the Jewish people. His story is of suffering and a never-ending grief felt by a father. Hay wrote the story in an extremely specific way that removes the barrier between reader and anti-hero. You are neck deep in the Butcher's grief with him and there is no escape. You cannot look away and it makes the story a raw, emotional, painful experience for us just like it was for the Butcher.

He rediscovers hope and temptation, the chance to try again, only to have it snatched away and tumble back into despair. We see Mary Magdalene and Nazareth and Jesus and how community is so critical to their survival, success, and emotional growth. Without community, when we isolate ourselves, our grief and anger rule us and turn us into monsters. We need each other to create life and we need each other to navigate death.

This book made me think. It forced me to stop thinking of linear stories and read it differently. The paper texture, the text choice, the margins, all of them play a part in telling Hay's story and I think it is so much richer because of it. The writing is spellbinding, something new in the genre done so expertly I've never read anything like it before. He captures you immediately, then holds you with style that's saturated with substance. It reads like a scream of grief into the earth and sky. A terrible catharsis as if exhaled after holding your breath.

You rarely know what's real and what's imagined, but that isn't the point. The point is to witness the Butcher and what being consumed by his loss has done to him, what it has taken from him because he cannot find a way to atone and forgive and seek comfort in his community. This book is brutal. It's so raw and emotional I never knew if I wanted to cry or gasp or hold my breath. I just knew it was important to be a witness to this spectacle of loss and pray in the end there was a way for the Butcher to find his way home.

5/5. Incredible.