To those who, for starters, don't mind the notion of a book that tapped its author on the shoulder and said "Write me," this highly personal walk through the Christian year might be uplifting. Madeleine L'Engle's method is to offer a kernel of meaning for each season ("unity in diversity," for example, in the case of Trinity), fleshing it out very loosely with poems and anecdotes from her own life. Her style is heavily with us in every sentence, though, and some rather stiff social values also obtrude ("I sympathize with experiments in communes, but any time we try to go back to the Garden it can mean being led by a Manson"). For readers who'd tire of the repeated image "nightside and sunside" (intuition and intellect), who couldn't thrill to "daisies and dynasties, starfish and stars" or keep anguishing over "slums and battlefields and insane asylums," suffocation warnings are posted.
Pub Date: Feb. 1, 1976
ISBN: 0866839461
Page Count: 227
Publisher: Seabury
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1976
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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
This first novel, ostensibly about the friendship between two boys, Reuven and Danny, from the time when they are fourteen on opposing yeshiva ball clubs, is actually a gently didactic differentiation between two aspects of the Jewish faith, the Hasidic and the Orthodox. Primarily the Hasidic, the little known mystics with their beards, earlocks and stringently reclusive way of life. According to Reuven's father who is a Zionist, an activist, they are fanatics; according to Danny's, other Jews are apostates and Zionists "goyim." The schisms here are reflected through discussions, between fathers and sons, and through the separation imposed on the two boys for two years which still does not affect their lasting friendship or enduring hopes: Danny goes on to become a psychiatrist refusing his inherited position of "tzaddik"; Reuven a rabbi.... The explanation, in fact exegesis, of Jewish culture and learning, of the special dedication of the Hasidic with its emphasis on mind and soul, is done in sufficiently facile form to engage one's interest and sentiment. The publishers however see a much wider audience for The Chosen. If they "rub their tzitzis for good luck,"—perhaps—although we doubt it.
Pub Date: April 28, 1967
ISBN: 0449911543
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: April 6, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 1, 1967
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