There’s an evocative sketch of modern anomie in here—underneath mounds of dreary navel-gazing.
A slacker Christ proffers dubious miracles and murky teachings in this tale of squalid redemption.
The nameless narrator of this hangdog gospel is a 20-year-old college student living at home in the generic suburb of Birchwood Forest and dreading his prospects in a world of money-grubbing materialism. Then signs and wonders jolt his ennui—after an impromptu baptism, an invisible voice booms, “You are my beloved son, in whom I am well pleased”—and finally his doting mother spells things out: He is the offspring of an immaculate conception and the savior of the world. The nonplussed, decidedly lower-case savior doesn’t feel especially divine or well-disposed toward humanity, but he starts to invest every inane misadventure with a biblical resonance: a dead-end job at a hardware store becomes a temptation by Satan, and a symbolic resurrection occurs when he tries to free his brother from an emasculating girlfriend by ensnaring her in a vomit-garnished make-out session. He goes on to gain as disciples a jive-talking gas-station clerk and a bum who spouts mediocre surrealist poetry, and elaborates a sophomoric spiritual critique of the sterile conformism of suburbia and the corporate world. Haddad situates the savior in a well-observed landscape of soulless strip-malls, nondescript subdivisions and grungy student hangouts. He writes with a vivid particularism and flair when he focuses on this hellishly mundane setting and the troubled, quirky souls that inhabit it. Unfortunately, the novel is usually turned inward toward the savior’s fustian ruminations on morality, society and, most of all, himself. (“Instead of being a part of the whole, I was apart from everything. I was apart from people because I was God and apart from God because I was human. I was apart from people because I hated them and apart from God because I was here on earth, in this utopia turned dystopia.”) These interminable monologues will leave readers longing for pithier sermons.
There’s an evocative sketch of modern anomie in here—underneath mounds of dreary navel-gazing.Pub Date: March 28, 2011
ISBN: 978-1461049562
Page Count: 212
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 22, 2011
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
Hoffman (The Red Garden, 2011, etc.) births literature from tragedy: the destruction of Jerusalem's Temple, the siege of Masada and the loss of Zion.
This is a feminist tale, a story of strong, intelligent women wedded to destiny by love and sacrifice. Told in four parts, the first comes from Yael, daughter of Yosef bar Elhanan, a Sicarii Zealot assassin, rejected by her father because of her mother's death in childbirth. It is 70 CE, and the Temple is destroyed. Yael, her father, and another Sicarii assassin, Jachim ben Simon, and his family flee Jerusalem. Hoffman's research renders the ancient world real as the group treks into Judea's desert, where they encounter Essenes, search for sustenance and burn under the sun. There too Jachim and Yael begin a tragic love affair. At Masada, Yael is sent to work in the dovecote, gathering eggs and fertilizer. She meets Shirah, her daughters, and Revka, who narrates part two. Revka's husband was killed when Romans sacked their village. Later, her daughter was murdered. At Masada, caring for grandsons turned mute by tragedy, Revka worries over her scholarly son-in-law, Yoav, now consumed by vengeance. Aziza, daughter of Shirah, carries the story onward. Born out of wedlock, Aziza grew up in Moab, among the people of the blue tunic. Her passion and curse is that she was raised as a warrior by her foster father. In part four, Shirah tells of her Alexandrian youth, the cherished daughter of a consort of the high priests. Shirah is a keshaphim, a woman of amulets, spells and medicine, and a woman connected to Shechinah, the feminine aspect of God. The women are irretrievably bound to Eleazar ben Ya'ir, Masada's charismatic leader; Amram, Yael's brother; and Yoav, Aziza's companion and protector in battle. The plot is intriguingly complex, with only a single element unresolved. An enthralling tale rendered with consummate literary skill.
Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4516-1747-4
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2011
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