Engaging and intelligent fiction that celebrates one of Christianity’s great women.
George (Mary Queen of Scotland and the Isles, 1992, etc.) again brings a historical figure to life, this time in a low-key but persuasively feminist take on the early disciple who found Christ’s empty tomb.
Though actual documentation of the life of Mary, the woman from Magdala on the Sea of Galilee, is scanty, George has done enough homework to make her role in early Christianity credible. Her Mary is not only the woman of the Gospels but also a preacher, healer, and confidante of Jesus, with whom she shares her troubling prophetic dreams. From her early childhood, when the story begins, Mary is bright and thoughtful but subject to strange dreams. Intimations of her future begin when, at seven, she goes with her family to Jerusalem to celebrate the Feast of Weeks. She picks up a carved ivory figure from the ground where the family is camping and hides it among her possessions. On this same expedition, she also meets and is impressed by the young Jesus and his mother Mary, also attending the festival. Mary Magdalene grows up, still haunted by dreams, but as she nears marriageable age, she is increasingly troubled by voices, skin lesions, and odd movements in her room. Being wed to Joel doesn’t help, and, frightened that the hidden idol is responsible, she confesses her fears to him. When none of the prescribed cures work, the young woman, despairing, heads to the desert, and there, listening to John the Baptist, meets Jesus. He exorcises the demons and the story goes on to tell how she joins Jesus (after being expelled by her family) and begins healing and preaching with the disciples. In relating the events leading to the Crucifixion, and the years afterward, George suggests that Mary loved Jesus not only as the Messiah but also as a man.
Engaging and intelligent fiction that celebrates one of Christianity’s great women.Pub Date: June 10, 2002
ISBN: 0-670-03096-1
Page Count: 528
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2002
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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