A passionate, digressive, empathetic history of religious rebels and the mystery of faith.
Memoir, fiction, and history combine in a stirring portrayal of the world of the first Christians.
In the 1990s, French novelist, screenwriter, and film producer Carrère (Limonov, 2014, etc.) went through what he calls his “Christian period,” obsessed with matters of faith and prayer. Feeling that he was “touched by grace,” he recorded his thoughts in notebooks and read everything he could to nourish the fervor of his sudden conversion. Now, describing himself as “historical, agnostic,” Carrère draws upon those notebooks as well as diverse historical, biblical, and literary sources to inform his inquiry into the origins of Christianity. Among them are The Life of Jesus by 19th-century historian Ernest Renan, excommunicated because he sought “to give a natural explanation to events that are deemed supernatural”; works by contemporary historian and archaeologist Paul Veyne; historical novels such as Quo Vadis and Memoirs of Hadrian; and even Mel Gibson’s controversial movie The Passion. His most compelling sources are the Gospels of John, Mark, and Luke and the letters and epistles of the demanding, domineering Paul: “I’ve tried to reconstruct what Paul said: the typical discourse heard in the synagogues of Greece and Asia around A.D. 50 by people who converted to a belief that was not yet known as Christianity.” As Carrère portrays him, Paul was “a controversial rabbi,” an irritable, annoying man who could not abide “when people listened to other preachers than him.” Luke comes across as gentler, more temperate and sympathetic. The author examines the Gospels “with a fine-tooth comb,” looking for consistencies, differences, and evidence of their source in a collection of texts known as Q "that tells us how Jesus spoke.” When his own sources fail him, he is “free—and forced—to invent,” which he does, exuberantly. “Christianism was a living organism,” he writes, and it is this organism—protean, fragile, sensational—that Carrère richly re-creates.
A passionate, digressive, empathetic history of religious rebels and the mystery of faith.Pub Date: March 7, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-374-18430-8
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
Review Posted Online: Dec. 6, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2016
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
Deep schmaltz in the Bible Belt.
Christian-fiction writer Martin (The Dead Don’t Dance, not reviewed) chronicles the personal tragedy of a Georgia heart surgeon.
Five years ago in Atlanta, Reese could not save his beloved wife Emma from heart failure, even though the Harvard-trained surgeon became a physician so that he could find a way to fix his childhood sweetheart’s congenitally faulty ticker. He renounced practicing medicine after her death and now lives in quiet anonymity as a boat mechanic on Lake Burton. Across the lake is Emma’s brother Charlie, who was rendered blind on the same desperate night that Reese fought to revive his wife on their kitchen floor. When Reese helps save the life of a seven-year-old local girl named Annie, who turns out to have irreparable heart damage, he is compassionately drawn into her case. He also grows close to Annie’s attractive Aunt Cindy and gradually comes to recognize that the family needs his expertise as a transplant surgeon. Martin displays some impressive knowledge about medical practice and the workings of the heart, but his Christian message is not exactly subtle. “If anything in this universe reflects the fingerprint of God, it is the human heart,” Reese notes of his medical studies. Emma’s letters (kept in a bank vault) quote Bible verse; Charlie elucidates stories of Jesus’ miracles for young Annie; even the napkins at the local bar, The Well, carry passages from the Gospel of John for the benefit of the biker clientele. Moreover, Martin relentlessly hammers home his sentimentality with nature-specific metaphors involving mating cardinals and crying crickets. (Annie sells crickets as well as lemonade to raise money for her heart surgery.) Reese’s habitual muttering of worldly slogans from Milton and Shakespeare (“I am ashes where once I was fire”) doesn’t much cut the cloying piety, and an over-the-top surgical save leaves the reader feeling positively bruised.
Deep schmaltz in the Bible Belt.Pub Date: April 4, 2006
ISBN: 1-5955-4054-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: WestBow/Thomas Nelson
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2006
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