Started off strong and then for a chapter or two it was one of the most uncomfortable books I’ve ever read. Couldn’t put it down, even if I was repulsed at times.

4.5❤️

This is a really fantastic novel. One man stuck on a desert island - the sole survivor of God's wrath. He tries to bring some sort of order to his new habitat, and forgiveness from his maker. It's witty and deep.I always wondered if Yann Martel read it before he wrote Life of Pi.

This novel had a profound influence on me when I was writing a religious-themed novel that included a gorilla, which I will rewrite and publish at some point.

What do you do when you're the last man left on Earth -- and the Lord speaks to you to let you know that this was just an oversight?

Calvin Cohn resurfaces from a deep sea dive to find the world destroyed by nuclear war and a subsequent flood, and then God appears to tell him that his survival was an oversight and that he is the last human on the earth. Before long, Cohn finds himself in the company of a group of chimpanzees on a tropical island. Once he teaches them to speak, Cohn sets about to recreate a better world since they've all been given a second chance. But there's only one young female chimp, and everything goes to hell.

From beginning to end, I really enjoyed this book. I relished Malamud's meditations on faith and the absurdity of existence, and particularly liked the scene in which Cohn is leading the chimps through a seder. By the end, the story broke my heart and chilled me to the bone in a way that few books have done.

This was Malamud's final novel. What an astonishing finish.

Without a doubt one of the strangest novels I've ever read.

The tone is too choppy - clunky transitions from sardonic to hopeful to dark with an attempt at poignant humor that falls flat at the end.

When Buz constantly asks his human "dod" to retell the story of the binding of isaac you know things are not going to end well...

I'm not remotely religious and I'm not into dystopian fiction, but I found this book totally compelling.

What the hell was that? Awful on almost every level. Unless post apocalyptic dystopian tales of bestiality float your boat. I'm guessing there was an allegorical message in there somewhere. Not for me.

I like Malamud's crisp writing style, but the allegory was a bit much for me. I appreciated the attempt, but I ended up feeling like I wanted a bit more from the character and the journey.

Paleologist Calvin Cohn, this novel's protagonist was studying the bottom of the ocean when the Second Flood struck. The flood is due to the thermonuclear war brought about by the Cold War (this novel was first published in 1982) and God willed the total anihilation of men on earth. However, God made a "marginal error" by not seeing Calvin in the bottom of the ocean and also some apes who also survived the catastrophe. The first of these apes to surface out is a chimp called Buz, a subject of a scientist who has been teaching him to speak like a human being. Soon other creatures appear - baboons, other chimps, five apes and a lone gorilla, George. This are all the characters in Malamud's modern-day dystopian fantasy: a man and a bunch of apes.

Aside from being a scientist, Calvin is a Jew. Since Buz can speak, he teaches the other apes on how to speak like him. Then Calvin tries to teach them like human beings in the "schooltree." Calvin believes that he and his bunch of apes can start another generation of "people" that will populate the earth. I will not tell you the ending because someone might call my attention and require me to put a spoiler in my review ha ha.

Bernard Malamud (1914-1986) is, along with Saul Bellow and Philip Roth, one of the greatest American Jewish authors. He is more known for his movies that have been turned into movies like The Natural and The Fixer. God's Grace is his last novel and it is, being a dystopian fantasy, a total departure from those two mainstream novels. In God's Grace, however, Malamud still incorporates his strong belief in God as he gave Calvin the ability to talk to God (mostly in dreams) and that God can take his life anytime as a correction to the "marginal error." That belief pervades the mood of the story as one can feel the danger that is lurking and that death is imminent. It's like watching James Cameron's Titanic because you know even at the start of the movie, that ship will capsize and most of them will die. That did not dampen your interest on the movie though because the movie is well-made. Just like God's Grace. It is well-written.

Made bestiality bearable.

HAH, a pun.