An inventive—and highly believable—biblical revisionist tale.
A mystery novel tells the story of an early female Christian leader whose history was erased.
Three women across two millennia challenge the official story of the Roman Catholic Church. The first is Julia Lucinia, a first-century Roman noblewoman trapped in a difficult marriage to an ambitious man. She befriends a kind servant, who introduces her to a strange temple-less sect run by a man named Paul: “He talks of one God, like the Jews do, Julia thought. And he speaks that everyone is equal in this one God’s eyes, whether fine man or slave. He honors women as well as men, seats masters and slaves together without respect to their rank.” Meanwhile, in the 21st century, two women are given access to the Vatican Library. Archaeologists Valentina Vella and Erika Simone discover a “strange” letter that appears to have originally been written by a female bishop: Julia Episcopa. The two are experts on Lucinia, whose trove of early Christian documents was preserved in the ruins of Herculaneum. But could this ancient Christian woman have, in fact, been something unknown to history: a female bishop? In both timelines, the truth of early Christianity will prove something the powers that be would rather keep hidden. In their series opener, Rigoli (Julia Episcopa: A Woman’s Struggle in the Church, 2012) and debut author Cummings write sharp prose, keeping the pace quick and the tensions high. The story is full of amusing bits of invented historical facts and encounters with famous names. Here Lucinia describes her first impression of Paul: “He is far from attractive, she thought. Yet there is something about him. Yes, he is appealing in an odd way.” The novel begs comparisons to Dan Brown, but The Da Vinci Code–like twists are actually rare. Rather than building toward the revelation of a mystery, the book is the story of a coverup and its discovery. The authors go right to the heart of one of the great unknowns of Christian history: the role of women in the early church. The journey is ultimately more thoughtful and satisfying than a mere holy grail.
An inventive—and highly believable—biblical revisionist tale.Pub Date: Jan. 12, 2018
ISBN: 978-1-983772-52-8
Page Count: 352
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 9, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.
Hunter’s debut novel tracks the experiences of her family members during the Holocaust.
Sol and Nechuma Kurc, wealthy, cultured Jews in Radom, Poland, are successful shop owners; they and their grown children live a comfortable lifestyle. But that lifestyle is no protection against the onslaught of the Holocaust, which eventually scatters the members of the Kurc family among several continents. Genek, the oldest son, is exiled with his wife to a Siberian gulag. Halina, youngest of all the children, works to protect her family alongside her resistance-fighter husband. Addy, middle child, a composer and engineer before the war breaks out, leaves Europe on one of the last passenger ships, ending up thousands of miles away. Then, too, there are Mila and Felicia, Jakob and Bella, each with their own share of struggles—pain endured, horrors witnessed. Hunter conducted extensive research after learning that her grandfather (Addy in the book) survived the Holocaust. The research shows: her novel is thorough and precise in its details. It’s less precise in its language, however, which frequently relies on cliché. “You’ll get only one shot at this,” Halina thinks, enacting a plan to save her husband. “Don’t botch it.” Later, Genek, confronting a routine bit of paperwork, must decide whether or not to hide his Jewishness. “That form is a deal breaker,” he tells himself. “It’s life and death.” And: “They are low, it seems, on good fortune. And something tells him they’ll need it.” Worse than these stale phrases, though, are the moments when Hunter’s writing is entirely inadequate for the subject matter at hand. Genek, describing the gulag, calls the nearest town “a total shitscape.” This is a low point for Hunter’s writing; elsewhere in the novel, it’s stronger. Still, the characters remain flat and unknowable, while the novel itself is predictable. At this point, more than half a century’s worth of fiction and film has been inspired by the Holocaust—a weighty and imposing tradition. Hunter, it seems, hasn’t been able to break free from her dependence on it.
Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-56308-9
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016
BOOK TO SCREEN
The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as...
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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