A well-executed rumination on ancient and familiar characters.
Campalani imagines the inner monologues of Jesus Christ in this short prose collection.
Campalani’s Jesus desires only love from an early age, knowing, as he does, what his future has in store for him. As a child, he asks Mary whether he can sleep in her bed, where he can feel safe and warm; “No,” she replies, “you must get used to loneliness. You’ll die alone.” Though the title refers to three voices, the narrators of all three sections are Jesus Christ at different ages. “Jesus” covers his early years, with vignettes describing his parents, his teachers, and his apprehension about his destiny. “Christós” covers the major events of his ministry, including his baptism, his time in the desert, and the Last Supper. The brief “Jhavè” limns his death on the cross, which involves him imagining a mirror that reveals his own difficult identity. Intro and outro sections—“First Letter” and “Farewell Letter”—bookend the work, which totals 48 pages. Campalani’s treatment of her subject matter is both subdued and earnest. She doesn’t go for irony or revisionism, but neither does she rob her subject of relatable human emotion. The result is a work that approaches the tragedy and affection that its source text must have originally possessed before it became dulled by centuries of reiteration. While Campalani’s language (or perhaps it is Sage’s translation from the Italian) sometimes veers into the abstract or clichéd (“This is my baptism of fire….You will join the revolution”), there are many small, quiet moments that show Christ as an individual. In one early scene, the child Jesus comforts his widowed mother who, after being rejected by a man at a wedding, realizes she can no longer be a sexual being: “She put a hand on my head to caress my hair. In that moment, my mum died as a woman, and she became the Mother: the earth, the moon, humidity, the night breeze, its thickness everywhere, the soil, the womb, honey, milk, pomegranate trees.” They feel real, and it is startling.
A well-executed rumination on ancient and familiar characters.Pub Date: Nov. 8, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5191-8833-5
Page Count: 54
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Jan. 4, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2016
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with...
Talk-show queen takes tumble as millions jeer.
Nora Bridges is a wildly popular radio spokesperson for family-first virtues, but her loyal listeners don't know that she walked out on her husband and teenaged daughters years ago and didn't look back. Now that a former lover has sold racy pix of naked Nora and horny himself to a national tabloid, her estranged daughter Ruby, an unsuccessful stand-up comic in Los Angeles, has been approached to pen a tell-all. Greedy for the fat fee she's been promised, Ruby agrees and heads for the San Juan Islands, eager to get reacquainted with the mom she plans to betray. Once in the family homestead, nasty Ruby alternately sulks and glares at her mother, who is temporarily wheelchair-bound as a result of a post-scandal car crash. Uncaring, Ruby begins writing her side of the story when she's not strolling on the beach with former sweetheart Dean Sloan, the son of wealthy socialites who basically ignored him and his gay brother Eric. Eric, now dying of cancer and also in a wheelchair, has returned to the island. This dismal threesome catch up on old times, recalling their childhood idylls on the island. After Ruby's perfect big sister Caroline shows up, there's another round of heartfelt talk. Nora gradually reveals the truth about her unloving husband and her late father's alcoholism, which led her to seek the approval of others at the cost of her own peace of mind. And so on. Ruby is aghast to discover that she doesn't know everything after all, but Dean offers her subdued comfort. Happy endings await almost everyone—except for readers of this nobly preachy snifflefest.
The best-selling author of tearjerkers like Angel Falls (2000) serves up yet another mountain of mush, topped off with syrupy platitudes about life and love.Pub Date: March 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-609-60737-5
Page Count: 336
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2001
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
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BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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