Exotic customs, spiritual upheavals and personal growth surround Mary, mother of Jesus, in her new life in Ephesus in Bacon’s in-depth historical drama.
It’s been a year since Mary lost her son, Jesus, and grief still consumes her. Since Jerusalem is not safe, Mary has moved to Ephesus to heal and to assist John, her son’s devoted disciple, and his fledgling church within the Jewish Diaspora community. Though bewildered by the Greco-Roman society’s worship of Artemis, the goddess protector of the city, and by the people’s strange customs, Mary tries to find her niche in this world. She becomes the Judean guardian of the sacred spring and performs the purification ritual for the Jewish people. Yet she eagerly awaits her son’s return and prays to him every night, asking him for guidance as she navigates new friendships and unfamiliar sights. But it is the appearance of Paul and his claims of her son’s divinity that throws all that she knows into disarray. How can she reconcile her Jewish faith with Paul’s preaching and her admiration for the Greek religion she’s come to respect? For Mary, it’s a journey fraught with emotional turmoil, enlightenment and spiritual soul-searching—one that will lead to a startling conclusion. Bacon has certainly done her research, and the reader will be immersed in the rich history and customs of the biblical world. Her meticulous descriptions sometimes slow the narrative, though those who are fascinated by such detail will relish each one. But it is in crafting Mary’s character that Bacon shines as she adds another dimension to a woman known mostly for being Jesus’ mother. Also fascinating is the intimate glimpse into Paul’s ministry and how it was received by the different cultures. Mary personifies how many must have felt in hearing this bold new message that clearly conflicted with the Jewish faith. Though the tradition of Mary in Ephesus is more myth than fact, this is nevertheless a fascinating account of what might have been.
Pub Date: Nov. 17, 2011
ISBN: 978-1450558372
Page Count: 305
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Dec. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2012
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
Miller makes Homer pertinent to women facing 21st-century monsters.
A retelling of ancient Greek lore gives exhilarating voice to a witch.
“Monsters are a boon for gods. Imagine all the prayers.” So says Circe, a sly, petulant, and finally commanding voice that narrates the entirety of Miller’s dazzling second novel. The writer returns to Homer, the wellspring that led her to an Orange Prize for The Song of Achilles (2012). This time, she dips into The Odyssey for the legend of Circe, a nymph who turns Odysseus’ crew of men into pigs. The novel, with its distinctive feminist tang, starts with the sentence: “When I was born, the name for what I was did not exist.” Readers will relish following the puzzle of this unpromising daughter of the sun god Helios and his wife, Perse, who had negligible use for their child. It takes banishment to the island Aeaea for Circe to sense her calling as a sorceress: “I will not be like a bird bred in a cage, I thought, too dull to fly even when the door stands open. I stepped into those woods and my life began.” This lonely, scorned figure learns herbs and potions, surrounds herself with lions, and, in a heart-stopping chapter, outwits the monster Scylla to propel Daedalus and his boat to safety. She makes lovers of Hermes and then two mortal men. She midwifes the birth of the Minotaur on Crete and performs her own C-section. And as she grows in power, she muses that “not even Odysseus could talk his way past [her] witchcraft. He had talked his way past the witch instead.” Circe’s fascination with mortals becomes the book’s marrow and delivers its thrilling ending. All the while, the supernatural sits intriguingly alongside “the tonic of ordinary things.” A few passages coil toward melodrama, and one inelegant line after a rape seems jarringly modern, but the spell holds fast. Expect Miller’s readership to mushroom like one of Circe’s spells.
Miller makes Homer pertinent to women facing 21st-century monsters.Pub Date: April 10, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-316-55634-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Little, Brown
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2018
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