A Grotesque in the Garden is a fantasy novella focusing on three point-of-view characters: the angel Tesque, who is tasked with guarding the Garden of Eden after Adam and Eve were expelled; the misanthropic human Naphil, who is on a solitary retreat in Iceland; and the dog Joy, who acts as a link between them. Tesque and Naphil mirror each other. While Tesque violates the first commandment, which is to love God, Naphil violates the second, as she does not love her fellow human beings. Tesque wonders why he is abandoned by God to guard the garden, especially as it is impossible for humans to reach it (a covert reference to Hudson's theory of hypertime and the Fall, see Hudson's The Fall and Hypertime (2014) ). Naphil receives his letters and responds.

In spite of the brevity of the work, this larger narrative framework is laced with poetic mini-stories. These stories are introduced through the Tree of Knowledge, the only sentient being with which Tesque converses. They prompt Tesque, Naphil, and the reader to reflect on a range of philosophical questions on the topics of the problem of evil, divine hiddenness, and divine deception.

Philosophical fiction has a respectable and ancient history. The clearest examples are perhaps philosophical novels by Iris Murdoch or Jean Paul Sartre. There are older antecedents, such as Ibn Tufayl's Hayy ibn Yaqdhan (twelfth century), an allegorical novel that discusses how a feral child, brought up by gazelles, discovers religious truth through reason and argument (Hudson's novella has a similar flavour). Analytic philosophers routinely write very brief stories (one might call them flash fiction) in the form of thought experiments, pithy scenarios written to elicit intuitions, such as the comatose violinist by Judith Jarvis Thomson, or Alvin Goldman's fake barn country. However, using a longer story format to explore philosophical ideas is still something of an oddity in analytic philosophy, though there are other professional philosophers who write fiction in the form of short stories (e.g. Eric Schwitzgebel, Sara Uckelman, and Dave Baker).

In the helpful introduction to Grotesque (‘A word from the author to the reader’) Hudson lays out the motivations for why he chose fiction, rather than a more conventional format such as an article or monograph. He states that he converted to Christianity as an adult, a conversion he describes as ‘largely an intellectual affair’ (5). While Hudson does not think his faith would waver as a result of personal experiences (such as the felt absence of God or some personal tragedy), he still considers it to be vulnerable to intellectual arguments. This novella is an attempt to deal with some of these anti-theistic arguments, which could potentially undermine his religious beliefs.

The first reason Hudson offers for using fiction is intellectual distance: fiction writers are free to investigate philosophical ideas without taking a firm position. This allows ways to explore intellectual space that are difficult to achieve in a non-fiction format. A potential disadvantage of using fiction in this way is that it is sometimes hard to discern what the author's position is. For example, Hume scholars continue to debate to what extent different characters are Hume's voice in Dialogues concerning Natural Religion (1779), which is also semi-fictional in its setup.

In his introduction, Hudson clears up this potential source of confusion: none of the characters speaks in his own voice, thus allowing him a certain intellectual distance from the arguments he explores. Philosophy of religion in the analytic tradition is usually quite adversarial, so if Hudson were to write about these arguments in the ordinary way, he would need to defend a position. Take, for instance, divine deception. Can we be sure that a divine being, even one who is omniscient, omnipotent, and wholly good, would not have good reason to deceive us about our most fundamental religious commitments? Hudson would need either to argue that this is a serious problem and that counterarguments are ineffective, or to offer possible defences and provide a solution. Now, he uses a poignant mini-story within the novella to introduce divine deception. In a besieged city fortress, a trusted counsellor asks a thirteen-year-old boy to consume a meal that ‘will place him in a deep and untroubled sleep from which he may be reawakened and reunited with the emperor after being safely and swiftly carried through the night and away from the palace by the royal guard’ (p. 57). While the boy trusts the counsellor, and knows him as a wise man of unsurpassed character, he realizes that this is not enough to assure him he has not been deceived into taking poison instead. The counsellor could have good reasons to deceive him, resulting in a merciful death rather than capture and torture by the besiegers.

The second reason Hudson offers for using fiction is rhetorical – he hopes that by putting philosophical ideas in the format of fiction, readers might be more open-minded towards arguments when ‘clothed in a narrative rather than in a standard philosophical essay’ (7). Hudson is probably on to something here, as psychological research indicates that reading fiction increases one's acceptance of ambiguous situations and reduces the psychological need for cognitive closure (the need to resolve a cognitive dilemma or situation). (See J. De Smedt, & H. De Cruz, ‘The epistemic value of speculative fiction’, Midwest Studies in Philosophy, 39 (2015), 58–77; M. Djikic, K. Oatley, & M. C. Moldoveanu, ‘Opening the closed mind: the effect of exposure to literature on the need for closure’, Creativity Research Journal, 25 (2013), 149–154.)

As a third motivation, Hudson offers the larger emotional scope of fiction. It ‘affords me the best prospects of communicating to others the profoundly disquieting feelings that have troubled me over the last few years’ (7). However, non-fiction can, and sometimes does, elicit strong emotions. For example, Émile Zola's J'accuse, a letter written against the anti-Semitism in the Dreyfus case, elicited strong emotions when it was published. Still, fiction allows for a broader range of methods to invoke emotions in readers. Donald Maess in The Emotional Craft of Fiction (2016) distinguishes three modes in which texts (both fictional and non-fictional) can elicit emotions: inner mode, outer mode, and other mode. Non-fiction primarily elicits emotions through ‘inner mode’, the telling of emotions. Sally Haslanger's remarks about women and other minorities in the profession is a case in point:

Haslanger conveys emotion through telling, eliciting an empathetic reaction, or perhaps recognition, in her audience. But fiction is additionally good at providing a pathway to an emotional response through ‘outer mode’, showing rather than telling. Hudson succeeds in this by describing the loneliness and desolation of the angel Tesque, who feels abandoned by God, walking the same path in the Garden of Eden over and over again. The mini-narratives do this with starkness and effectiveness. For example, on divine hiddenness:

Occasionally throughout the novel, emotions are evoked through ‘other mode’, causing the reader to experience feelings that the protagonist does not experience himself. The effective use of other mode is mainly confined to the first part of the novella, where the reader is invited to respond emotionally to Tesque's feelings of desolation (put into perspective in parts II and III).

In terms of its three stated aims, the novella is successful. It allows for an exploration of philosophical space in a new register and encourages open-mindedness. It also brings an emotional dimension to philosophy of religion that is often lacking in academic writing. There is at least a pedagogic motivation for expanding the philosophical conversation into fiction, as many philosophers of religion already quote from The Brothers Karamazov and other works of fiction when they discuss topics such as the problem of evil.

I have a few quibbles with what was otherwise an enjoyable and satisfying read. Parts II and III were somewhat less well developed than part I, and while Joy (the dog) is a link between the two anthropomorphic protagonists, its role in the story is not entirely clear. Moreover, the lack of Tesque's mentioning the dog is confusing (is he an unreliable narrator, or can he somehow not see it?). But overall, this book is a thought-provoking read for anyone interested in philosophy of religion, fiction, and particularly the intersection of these two domains.