Book Reviews

The Singer: A Classic
Retelling of Cosmic Conflict

Calvin Miller
(Downers Grove: InterVarsity Press, 25th anniversary ed., 2001, 151 pp., $16.99)

Reviewed by Robert P. Mills
July 2001
book
Both halves of the subtitle are correct. In the 25 years since its initial publication, The Singer has become a modern classic. And in this retelling of the old, old story, Calvin Miller poetically and powerfully reminds us that Jesus’ life, death and resurrection form the centerpiece of the universal battle of principalities and powers against the very personal love of God.

“When he awoke, the song was there” begins Chapter I. “He,” we learn is a troubadour working as a tradesman. The song is the Ancient Star-Song. The Earthmaker, Father-Spirit, asks the Troubadour: “Sing my Ancient Star-Song to the world.” He does, and the conflict with the World Hater begins in deadly earnest.

As Miller’s lyric impression of the gospel unfolds, familiar figures are introduced in fresh ways. We meet the River Singer, who baptizes the Troubadour, and the Troubadour’s mother, who told the Troubadour, “I heard the Ancient Star-Song only once. It was the very night that you were born.” She “had not heard its strains for thirty years but hungered for its music.”

We also meet a young girl with misshapen legs made whole by the Troubadour, a miller with a crippled hand who will not let the Troubadour heal him, a woman who sells her friendship by the hour, a madman chained to the Great Walled City of the Ancient King. And we encounter “the great machine of death,” upon which the Troubadour dies.

But, as we already know, the Troubadour’s death is not the end of the tale.

With a pastor’s heart for the people of God and a poet’s passion for words, especially God’s Word, Calvin Miller has indeed offered a classic retelling of Jesus’ life and work. May this anniversary edition of The Singer lead a new generation to a deeper understanding and appreciation of Earthmaker and the Ancient Star-Song.
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