Plenty of description and Church background material, but still a gripping read as words march for their presold audience.
Timothy John Cardinal Mulrennan returns (Conclave (2001)—and gets elected Pope.
While still Archbishop for Newark, Mulrennan was called to Rome to organize business in the Curia Romana and spent several years there learning Vatican politics. He loved Pope John but stood against the ultraconservative Evangelium Christi. When Good Pope John dies, a Filipino is elected, but Innocent XIV is assassinated within six months (by Muslim fanatics?), and Mulrennan is his successor: Pope Celestine VI. Now we learn that Innocent XIV had planned to bring the Church into the modern world, a plan admired today by Mulrennan. The new pope, a knowing politician, spots his enemies quickly when he decides to call an ecumenical council of bishops to discuss “a world of unspeakable terrorism and abuse of human beings,” to seek unity among Christian denominations, and understanding between Christians and other faiths, such as Judaism and Islam. The successor to an assassinated pope, Mulrennan knows firsthand the horrors of terrorism: he lent his presence and aid to victims of the World Trade Center attack. Meanwhile, Kurt Schulhafer, a veteran of the Vatican’s Swiss Guard, is rubbed out after he attempts to hire a murderer to kill a young guardsman who may expose Schulhafer’s homosexual past and cost him his job, pension, and family. This points to the need for heightened security measures for Mulrennan and the 4,000 bishops attending the council. Mix in a troubled parish priest called to Rome from New Jersey, his old Greek girlfriend (now a bureau chief in Rome), a girl from Bosnia-Herzegovina who has seen the Virgin six times and received ten secrets by her, a tumor on Mulrennan’s spine, a fanatical Argentine businessman sponsored by Evangelium Christi who murders Mulrennan’s closest advisor and has plans for a suicide plot.
Plenty of description and Church background material, but still a gripping read as words march for their presold audience.Pub Date: Aug. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-312-87353-0
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2002
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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