A short parablelike novella about the birth of Jesus Christ.
Paul’s (Praying Our Way Through Stress, 2013) latest is a brief work of religious historical fiction, similar to those of such best-selling Christian authors as Francine Rivers and Janette Oke. This work centers on the birth of Jesus and uses the tools of fiction to expand and elaborate upon the standard story in the Gospels of Luke and Matthew. The familiar elements are all here: The young woman Mary of Nazareth, betrothed to Joseph the carpenter, tells him that she’s been visited by an angel of God and is going to have a child who will be the savior of the world. Joseph is at first incredulous and outraged. “An angel?” he asks her angrily, adding, “Mary, you are just a girl”—one of Paul’s many lines that ring absolutely true. Joseph assumes that Mary has been with another man, voluntarily or not. Mary, and a visit from an angel in a dream, eventually convinces him of the truth, but when the two marry and journey to Bethlehem, they’re faced with the challenge of convincing someone else: namely, the keeper of a crowded inn. The gruff innkeeper and his tough, no-nonsense wife are the most enjoyable creations in Paul’s short tale—two everyday people who must decide how to cope with an unbelievable story. Joseph’s transparent sincerity wins over the innkeeper, who must then convince his wife that young Mary isn’t simply an adulteress. This argument between man and wife is the novella’s highlight, rich with simple, convincing human details. For example, the innkeeper asks his wife at one point, “Are you going to stand there staring out the window with your mind closed or are you coming back to the table to listen more?” She replies, “You need me back at the table in order to talk? I’ll come back to the table then!” The result is a charming work of fiction that will please even the crustiest agnostic.
A retelling of the New Testament narrative of Jesus’ birth brought winningly to life by well-chosen details.
Pub Date: May 5, 2014
ISBN: 978-1499008685
Page Count: 92
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: July 21, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.
The authors have created a sort of anti-Book of Virtues in this encyclopedic compendium of the ways and means of power.
Everyone wants power and everyone is in a constant duplicitous game to gain more power at the expense of others, according to Greene, a screenwriter and former editor at Esquire (Elffers, a book packager, designed the volume, with its attractive marginalia). We live today as courtiers once did in royal courts: we must appear civil while attempting to crush all those around us. This power game can be played well or poorly, and in these 48 laws culled from the history and wisdom of the world’s greatest power players are the rules that must be followed to win. These laws boil down to being as ruthless, selfish, manipulative, and deceitful as possible. Each law, however, gets its own chapter: “Conceal Your Intentions,” “Always Say Less Than Necessary,” “Pose as a Friend, Work as a Spy,” and so on. Each chapter is conveniently broken down into sections on what happened to those who transgressed or observed the particular law, the key elements in this law, and ways to defensively reverse this law when it’s used against you. Quotations in the margins amplify the lesson being taught. While compelling in the way an auto accident might be, the book is simply nonsense. Rules often contradict each other. We are told, for instance, to “be conspicuous at all cost,” then told to “behave like others.” More seriously, Greene never really defines “power,” and he merely asserts, rather than offers evidence for, the Hobbesian world of all against all in which he insists we live. The world may be like this at times, but often it isn’t. To ask why this is so would be a far more useful project.
If the authors are serious, this is a silly, distasteful book. If they are not, it’s a brilliant satire.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 1998
ISBN: 0-670-88146-5
Page Count: 430
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 1998
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK TO SCREEN
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
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