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
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
Constructed with delicacy, lyricism, and care, Hertmans’ novel still feels occasionally static.
A Christian woman and a Jewish man fall in love in medieval France.
In 1088, a Christian girl of Norman descent falls in love with the son of a rabbi. They run away together, to disastrous effect: Her father sends knights after them, and though they flee to a small southern village where they spend a few happy years, their budding family is soon decimated by a violent wave of First Crusaders on their way to Jerusalem. The girl, whose name becomes Hamoutal when she converts to Judaism, winds up roaming the world. Hertmans’ (War and Turpentine, 2016, etc.) latest novel is based on a true story: The Cairo Genizah, a trove of medieval manuscripts preserved in an Egyptian synagogue, contained an account of Hamoutal’s plight. Hamoutal makes up about half of Hertmans’ novel; the other half is consumed by Hertmans’ own interest in her story. Whenever he can, he follows her journey: from Rouen, where she grew up, to Monieux, where she and David Todros—her Jewish husband—made a brief life for themselves, and all the way to Cairo, and back. “Knowing her life story and its tragic end,” Hertmans writes, “I wish I could warn her of what lies ahead.” The book has a quiet intimacy to it, and in his descriptions of landscape and travel, Hertmans’ prose is frequently lovely. In Narbonne, where David’s family lived, Hertmans describes “the cool of the paving stones in the late morning, the sound of doves’ wings flapping in the immaculate air.” But despite the drama of Hamoutal’s story, there is a static quality to the book, particularly in the sections where Hertmans describes his own travels. It’s an odd contradiction: Hertmans himself moves quickly through the world, but his book doesn’t quite move quickly enough.
Constructed with delicacy, lyricism, and care, Hertmans’ novel still feels occasionally static.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5247-4708-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
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