by James Cannon ‧ RELEASE DATE: Nov. 8, 2005
Flawed, but surprisingly engrossing.
Another knock-off of Anita Diamant’s The Red Tent: this time, the story of Saint Paul.
In this fictionalized account by former journalist Cannon (Time and Chance, 1993), Saul zealously devotes himself to Torah study after his beloved mother’s death. He earns a post as clerk on the Sanhedrin, the rabbinical court, and eventually becomes the chief persecutor of those who followed the recently crucified Jesus of Nazareth. After his dramatic conversion (and name change) on the road to Damascus, Paul becomes a leader of the new religious movement, spreading the gospel throughout the gentile world. There is, of course, a romantic sub-plot. Paul and his childhood sweetheart Phoebe separated when he left Tarsus to study at the school of Rabbi Gamliel, but she never lost sight of her beloved, and when she learned that he had become a Christian, she followed suit. Years later, the two meet up again, and though Paul declines to marry Phoebe—he worries that marriage would interfere with his mission to carry the Good News around the world—the two rekindle a certain friendship, and she becomes one of his most trusted delegates. Paul is articulate and fiercely devoted to the cause, but he is not perfect. As a young man, he is prideful and arrogant. After becoming a devotee of Jesus, he finds himself jealous and critical of James, Jesus’ half-brother, and of Peter, one of the original disciples. Paul thinks James “pretentious” and “defensive,” and deems Peter “woefully unprepared” to oversee anything “larger than a fishing boat.” The novel slows down a little when it comes time for Paul to draft his famous epistles; it would take a writer more skilled than Cannon to make chapter after chapter of letter-writing gripping. And, throughout, the book is marred by stilted prose: “Chattel I am,” one character laments. “To be sold for silver, like a lamb to be sacrificed.”
Flawed, but surprisingly engrossing.Pub Date: Nov. 8, 2005
ISBN: 1-58642-094-1
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Steerforth
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2005
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by Heather Morris ‧ RELEASE DATE: Sept. 4, 2018
The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as...
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An unlikely love story set amid the horrors of a Nazi death camp.
Based on real people and events, this debut novel follows Lale Sokolov, a young Slovakian Jew sent to Auschwitz in 1942. There, he assumes the heinous task of tattooing incoming Jewish prisoners with the dehumanizing numbers their SS captors use to identify them. When the Tätowierer, as he is called, meets fellow prisoner Gita Furman, 17, he is immediately smitten. Eventually, the attraction becomes mutual. Lale proves himself an operator, at once cagey and courageous: As the Tätowierer, he is granted special privileges and manages to smuggle food to starving prisoners. Through female prisoners who catalog the belongings confiscated from fellow inmates, Lale gains access to jewels, which he trades to a pair of local villagers for chocolate, medicine, and other items. Meanwhile, despite overwhelming odds, Lale and Gita are able to meet privately from time to time and become lovers. In 1944, just ahead of the arrival of Russian troops, Lale and Gita separately leave the concentration camp and experience harrowingly close calls. Suffice it to say they both survive. To her credit, the author doesn’t flinch from describing the depravity of the SS in Auschwitz and the unimaginable suffering of their victims—no gauzy evasions here, as in Boy in the Striped Pajamas. She also manages to raise, if not really explore, some trickier issues—the guilt of those Jews, like the tattooist, who survived by doing the Nazis’ bidding, in a sense betraying their fellow Jews; and the complicity of those non-Jews, like the Slovaks in Lale’s hometown, who failed to come to the aid of their beleaguered countrymen.
The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as nonfiction. Still, this is a powerful, gut-wrenching tale that is hard to shake off.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-279715-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
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by Susan Crandall ‧ RELEASE DATE: July 2, 2013
Young Starla is an endearing character whose spirited observations propel this nicely crafted story.
Crandall (Sleep No More, 2010, etc.) delivers big with a coming-of-age story set in Mississippi in 1963 and narrated by a precocious 9-year-old.
Due in part to tradition, intimidation and Jim Crow laws, segregation is very much ingrained into the Southern lifestyle in 1963. Few white children question these rules, least of all Starla Caudelle, a spunky young girl who lives with her stern, unbending grandmother in Cayuga Springs, Miss., and spends an inordinate amount of time on restriction for her impulsive actions and sassy mouth. Starla’s dad works on an oil rig in the Gulf; her mother abandoned the family to seek fame and fortune in Nashville when Starla was 3. In her youthful innocence, Starla’s convinced that her mother’s now a big singing star, and she dreams of living with her again one day, a day that seems to be coming more quickly than Starla’s anticipated. Convinced that her latest infraction is about to land her in reform school, Starla decides she has no recourse but to run away from home and head to Nashville to find her mom. Ill prepared for the long, hot walk and with little concept of time and distance, Starla becomes weak and dehydrated as she trudges along the hot, dusty road. She gladly accepts water and a ride from Eula, a black woman driving an old truck, and finds, to her surprise, that she’s not Eula’s only passenger. Inside a basket is a young white baby, an infant supposedly abandoned outside a church, whom Eula calls James. Although Eula doesn’t intend to drive all the way to Nashville, when she shows up at her home with the two white children, a confrontation with her husband forces her into becoming a part of Starla’s journey, and it’s this journey that creates strong bonds between the two: They help each other face fears as they each become stronger individuals. Starla learns firsthand about the abuse and scare tactics used to intimidate blacks and the skewed assumption of many whites that blacks are inferior beings. Assisted by a black schoolteacher who shows Eula and Starla unconditional acceptance and kindness, both ultimately learn that love and kinship transcend blood ties and skin color.
Young Starla is an endearing character whose spirited observations propel this nicely crafted story.Pub Date: July 2, 2013
ISBN: 978-1-4767-0772-3
Page Count: 320
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 20, 2013
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 2013
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