Rice’s Christ is both convincing and compelling. Another winner.
Rice continues the story of Jesus, which she began with 2005’s stunning Out of Egypt.
Silent Hannah, a deaf mute, claws the air. She’s just heard that her brother, the Orphan, and Yitra, another beautiful boy, have been stoned by a viciously self-righteous crowd. The murdered boys were doomed by rumors of their forbidden love. Comforting Hannah with his strange serenity, is Yeshua bar Joseph, or Yeshua the Sinless, another townsman about whom the Nazarenes whisper: Past 30 and still unmarried? Fitfully sure of his destiny—his spiritual intuitions come upon him like spasms—Jesus senses that ordinary life is divinely denied him. He is smitten with Avigail, Silent Hannah’s best friend and the town’s angelic beauty, but knows that his love must be chaste. So when marauding brigands attempt to kidnap her, his rescue of the girl is tender but irreproachable. Not so, however, believes her furiously possessive father. Sealing her into his house, he makes her a horrific example of shunning; with patriarchal perversity, he blames the almost-rape victim for “allowing” herself to be attacked. And Jesus becomes suspect, with Avigail’s father making insinuations about the young people’s connection. To find her shelter, Jesus journeys to Cana, there to petition the scribe Hananel to intercede. Its subplots detailing the machinations of Pontius Pilate and Herod Antipas, the Essene struggle toward a purer faith and the flight of some of Jesus’s comrades to Athens to study philosophy, this is painstakingly researched historical fiction.
Rice’s Christ is both convincing and compelling. Another winner.Pub Date: March 4, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4000-4352-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2008
These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942
ISBN: 0060652934
Page Count: 53
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943
An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it...
Harris, creator of grand, symphonic thrillers from Fatherland (1992) to An Officer and a Spy (2014), scores with a chamber piece of a novel set in the Vatican in the days after a fictional pope dies.
Fictional, yes, but the nameless pontiff has a lot in common with our own Francis: he’s famously humble, shunning the lavish Apostolic Palace for a small apartment, and he is committed to leading a church that engages with the world and its problems. In the aftermath of his sudden death, rumors circulate about the pope’s intention to fire certain cardinals. At the center of the action is Cardinal Lomeli, Dean of the College of Cardinals, whose job it is to manage the conclave that will elect a new pope. He believes it is also his duty to uncover what the pope knew before he died because some of the cardinals in question are in the running to succeed him. “In the running” is an apt phrase because, as described by Harris, the papal conclave is the ultimate political backroom—albeit a room, the Sistine Chapel, covered with Michelangelo frescoes. Vying for the papal crown are an African cardinal whom many want to see as the first black pope, a press-savvy Canadian, an Italian arch-conservative (think Cardinal Scalia), and an Italian liberal who wants to continue the late pope’s campaign to modernize the church. The novel glories in the ancient rituals that constitute the election process while still grounding that process in the real world: the Sistine Chapel is fitted with jamming devices to thwart electronic eavesdropping, and the pressure to act quickly is increased because “rumours that the pope is dead are already trending on social media.”
An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it is pure temptation.Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-451-49344-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016
BOOK TO SCREEN
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