In this intriguing debut novel the author imagines the life of Jesus, recast as a woman.
Partially inspired by Elaine Pagels’ scholarly The Gnostic Gospels, Wolf creates an alternative understanding of Jesus, as a non-deity healer who espouses a spiritual connection to a feminine earth. The novel opens with Anna as a tomboy devoted to her mother Mari and frightened of her father Yoseph, a tyrannical adherent to the new religion. The old religion (Mari was a follower) promoted gender equality and valued the role of women as regenerators of life. Few are left who practice the old ways, but those who do, like Nazareth’s Zahra, are both revered for their ability to heal, and shunned. When tragedy befalls Mari, and Zahra is stoned to death, Joseph disguises Anna as a boy and sells her to a passing band of shepherds. But this is no ordinary group of men; it is led by Solomon (Zahra’s son, who was told of a special child) and Judas, Guardians of The Way. It is Solomon and Judas’ duty to one day take their new shepherd to the Sisters. Meanwhile, Anna, who knows nothing of The Way or Solomon’s connection to Zahra, renames herself Jesus and lives quite happily as a boy, with her new best friend Peter. As Jesus grows older and stronger, he becomes a skilled shepherd. Solomon sends him on a journey, knowing he will be “captured” by the Sisters. Anna is among them for years where they live a monastic life recording spiritual and medical knowledge, practicing a kind of telepathic communication and preparing the chosen few to become Awakeners, women who dangerously set out to spread The Way. But the times are hostile to women and a massacre destroys their whole society, save Anna and two others. The three venture out, now with Anna as the man Jesus, who has a message for the world. Wolf cleverly uses the story of Jesus to create an alternate ending to the Crucifixion, in which the Sister’s message of peace is perverted, but her insertion of a kind of New Age philosophy somewhat diminishes an otherwise fascinating idea.
Pub Date: July 12, 2011
ISBN: 978-0-307-71769-6
Page Count: 368
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: July 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2011
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.
Hannah’s new novel is an homage to the extraordinary courage and endurance of Frenchwomen during World War II.
In 1995, an elderly unnamed widow is moving into an Oregon nursing home on the urging of her controlling son, Julien, a surgeon. This trajectory is interrupted when she receives an invitation to return to France to attend a ceremony honoring passeurs: people who aided the escape of others during the war. Cut to spring, 1940: Viann has said goodbye to husband Antoine, who's off to hold the Maginot line against invading Germans. She returns to tending her small farm, Le Jardin, in the Loire Valley, teaching at the local school and coping with daughter Sophie’s adolescent rebellion. Soon, that world is upended: The Germans march into Paris and refugees flee south, overrunning Viann’s land. Her long-estranged younger sister, Isabelle, who has been kicked out of multiple convent schools, is sent to Le Jardin by Julien, their father in Paris, a drunken, decidedly unpaternal Great War veteran. As the depredations increase in the occupied zone—food rationing, systematic looting, and the billeting of a German officer, Capt. Beck, at Le Jardin—Isabelle’s outspokenness is a liability. She joins the Resistance, volunteering for dangerous duty: shepherding downed Allied airmen across the Pyrenees to Spain. Code-named the Nightingale, Isabelle will rescue many before she's captured. Meanwhile, Viann’s journey from passive to active resistance is less dramatic but no less wrenching. Hannah vividly demonstrates how the Nazis, through starvation, intimidation and barbarity both casual and calculated, demoralized the French, engineering a community collapse that enabled the deportations and deaths of more than 70,000 Jews. Hannah’s proven storytelling skills are ideally suited to depicting such cataclysmic events, but her tendency to sentimentalize undermines the gravitas of this tale.
Still, a respectful and absorbing page-turner.Pub Date: Feb. 3, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-312-57722-3
Page Count: 448
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 19, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2014
BOOK TO SCREEN
SEEN & HEARD
BOOK TO SCREEN
These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942
ISBN: 0060652934
Page Count: 53
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943
© Copyright 2026 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
