An ambitious, readable tale about a fictional Jesus and a religious scholar who tries to understand the Nazarene’s mission.
A debut historical novel reimagines the story of Jesus.
Vadok offers two parallel narratives separated by a generation, echoing each other throughout the book. One follows the life of a young man named Joshua, son of Mary and Joseph, who becomes a charismatic preacher in the Jerusalem area in the first decades of direct Roman rule. The other unfolds 40 years later in the embattled Christian community of Syrian Antioch, where a rabbi named Ariel, who was taught Christianity by St. Paul, finds himself confronted by the doubts and criticisms of the members of his congregation. They have lost their assurance that there’s any truth in the promises of Joshua and newborn Christianity. “I grieve for all those who’ve lost faith, for those who deny you and say you’ll never return,” Ariel confesses in prayer. “Those who dare say that you were wrong and cannot, or will not, come to vindicate the righteous of this sorry world.” In the author’s handling, it isn’t only Ariel’s friends and parishioners who undermine his faith—it’s also his parallel story, since the figure he prays to is a decidedly different character than the one Christians encounter in the New Testament. Joshua is a normal, flesh-and-blood man, a fan of the noncanonical Books of Enoch and an acolyte of John the Baptist. He may medically assess the state of some wretch’s leprosy, for instance, but he can’t cure it. Even the demons he exorcises may in reality be trauma resulting from sexual abuse. It isn’t long before Ariel is “drowning in a sea of scripture,” writing his own book about the life and teachings of Joshua. The biggest risk in the framework of Vadok’s novel is likewise its greatest weakness: Its two narratives are unevenly captivating. Ariel is a likable figure, but 50 of him couldn’t match the elemental fascination of the Jesus character. The author shores up Ariel’s plotlines by stressing the upheavals of his time, the increasing oppression of Roman forces, the destruction of the great Temple of Jerusalem, and so on. The cynicism arising in the wake of Israel’s war with the Romans is the source of the discontent Ariel’s followers feel toward the Jesus story, and the period research Vadok has obviously done makes these sections feel realistically constructed. In this respect, the work will remind readers of other historical reconstructions of the New Testament such as Man of Nazareth by Anthony Burgess and King Jesus by Robert Graves. “I’m Rabbi Joshua of Nazareth. My companions here are my disciples,” Joshua says at one point. “We travel around to inform people that the time predicted by the prophets has arrived.” Vadok sprinkles his text with modern language (including obscenities), which helps both narratives to read more smoothly. And the interconnectedness of the two strains grows increasingly and pleasingly complex as the book progresses. This novel is an intriguing entry in the genre of Jesus fiction.
An ambitious, readable tale about a fictional Jesus and a religious scholar who tries to understand the Nazarene’s mission.Pub Date: April 3, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5246-8460-0
Page Count: 384
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: June 21, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.
Hunter’s debut novel tracks the experiences of her family members during the Holocaust.
Sol and Nechuma Kurc, wealthy, cultured Jews in Radom, Poland, are successful shop owners; they and their grown children live a comfortable lifestyle. But that lifestyle is no protection against the onslaught of the Holocaust, which eventually scatters the members of the Kurc family among several continents. Genek, the oldest son, is exiled with his wife to a Siberian gulag. Halina, youngest of all the children, works to protect her family alongside her resistance-fighter husband. Addy, middle child, a composer and engineer before the war breaks out, leaves Europe on one of the last passenger ships, ending up thousands of miles away. Then, too, there are Mila and Felicia, Jakob and Bella, each with their own share of struggles—pain endured, horrors witnessed. Hunter conducted extensive research after learning that her grandfather (Addy in the book) survived the Holocaust. The research shows: her novel is thorough and precise in its details. It’s less precise in its language, however, which frequently relies on cliché. “You’ll get only one shot at this,” Halina thinks, enacting a plan to save her husband. “Don’t botch it.” Later, Genek, confronting a routine bit of paperwork, must decide whether or not to hide his Jewishness. “That form is a deal breaker,” he tells himself. “It’s life and death.” And: “They are low, it seems, on good fortune. And something tells him they’ll need it.” Worse than these stale phrases, though, are the moments when Hunter’s writing is entirely inadequate for the subject matter at hand. Genek, describing the gulag, calls the nearest town “a total shitscape.” This is a low point for Hunter’s writing; elsewhere in the novel, it’s stronger. Still, the characters remain flat and unknowable, while the novel itself is predictable. At this point, more than half a century’s worth of fiction and film has been inspired by the Holocaust—a weighty and imposing tradition. Hunter, it seems, hasn’t been able to break free from her dependence on it.
Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-56308-9
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016
BOOK TO SCREEN
The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as...
An unlikely love story set amid the horrors of a Nazi death camp.
Based on real people and events, this debut novel follows Lale Sokolov, a young Slovakian Jew sent to Auschwitz in 1942. There, he assumes the heinous task of tattooing incoming Jewish prisoners with the dehumanizing numbers their SS captors use to identify them. When the Tätowierer, as he is called, meets fellow prisoner Gita Furman, 17, he is immediately smitten. Eventually, the attraction becomes mutual. Lale proves himself an operator, at once cagey and courageous: As the Tätowierer, he is granted special privileges and manages to smuggle food to starving prisoners. Through female prisoners who catalog the belongings confiscated from fellow inmates, Lale gains access to jewels, which he trades to a pair of local villagers for chocolate, medicine, and other items. Meanwhile, despite overwhelming odds, Lale and Gita are able to meet privately from time to time and become lovers. In 1944, just ahead of the arrival of Russian troops, Lale and Gita separately leave the concentration camp and experience harrowingly close calls. Suffice it to say they both survive. To her credit, the author doesn’t flinch from describing the depravity of the SS in Auschwitz and the unimaginable suffering of their victims—no gauzy evasions here, as in Boy in the Striped Pajamas. She also manages to raise, if not really explore, some trickier issues—the guilt of those Jews, like the tattooist, who survived by doing the Nazis’ bidding, in a sense betraying their fellow Jews; and the complicity of those non-Jews, like the Slovaks in Lale’s hometown, who failed to come to the aid of their beleaguered countrymen.
The writing is merely serviceable, and one can’t help but wish the author had found a way to present her material as nonfiction. Still, this is a powerful, gut-wrenching tale that is hard to shake off.Pub Date: Sept. 4, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-06-279715-5
Page Count: 272
Publisher: Harper/HarperCollins
Review Posted Online: July 16, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2018
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