Girzone's enormously popular Joshua series (The Shepherd, 1990, etc.) continues, now taking its charismatic, Christlike protagonist to present-day Israel, where his updated parables and common-sense approach to peace spread oil on historically troubled waters. Just exactly who is this fellow? Girzone never quite says he's Jesus of Nazareth back for another round with a screwed-up world, but he hints heavily. The young man always knows the names of people he meets for the first time; he never gets worried; he knows Israel like the back of his hand; and he never talks in contractions. On foot (sandaled), the friendly, well-tanned young man wanders into an Arab camp bearing a lost lamb belonging to the granddaughter of the local sheik. Hitting it off with the aged sheik (but not with the sheik's son), he stays to supper and later that night cures the granddaughter of snakebite. It's the first of a string of miracles for which Joshua takes no credit, pointing out that that sort of thing is God's work. The grateful chieftain provides the friendly Jew an entree into the Arab community, the first step of a nonpolitical peace process that actually works. Strolling around Israel, Joshua chats up Christians, Moslems, and Jews, making friends and followers wherever he goes, pointing out quite sensibly that things aren't going to be better until everybody stops indulging in vengeance and gets down to the work of getting along. There are numerous parallels to events of two thousand years ago, but the actors are new, and the results more upbeat. Affecting at times, and never smarmy. Still, not for the cynical.
Pub Date: Oct. 1, 1992
ISBN: 0-02-543445-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1992
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
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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