A fresh, gripping fictional rendition of “the greatest story ever told.”
A debut novel that dramatizes the life of Jesus Christ.
Snow writes at the outset that Jesus is “the application that opens for us the possibility of an interactive life with the divine.” However, the author quickly dispenses with this computer-app conceit to settle into a far more traditional and effective enterprise: transforming the four Gospels of the New Testament into a novel. The narrator is “the Beloved Disciple,” and his story follows the standard outline of many similar works, from Taylor Caldwell’s I, Judas (1977) to Walter Wangerin’s Jesus (2005) and others. Readers meet John the Baptist and hear him preach the coming of the Messiah, then see Jesus begin his ministry and assemble his Apostles. Snow avoids the stilted language common to much biblical fiction, instead giving all his characters a clear, straightforward idiom—particularly Jesus himself, whose admonitions to his followers often sound distinctly pitched to modern readers (“First, you have to learn to sit still,” he tells a disciple. “Next, you have to finally learn to let go of all your own agendas and wait. Yes, wait, to be filled with your Father’s agendas”). Some doctrinal purists may quibble over the fact that Snow’s Jesus is very clearly depicted as a God-inspired man rather than as God himself. But what this approach may lack in Catholic theology, it more than makes up for in readability. When this human Jesus speaks to doubters, he sounds entirely believable as a passionate character: “It’s not the well person who needs a doctor but the sick,” he says at one point. “Think it through!” In order to add tension to the best-known plot climax in history, Snow introduces pages from the diary of Jerusalem’s chief priest Annas to the final act, and the gambit works: Readers will still be kept guessing, even in the midst of very familiar proceedings. The result is a first-rate historical novel that a reader of any faith will likely appreciate.
A fresh, gripping fictional rendition of “the greatest story ever told.”Pub Date: July 29, 2014
ISBN: 978-1499046892
Page Count: 402
Publisher: Xlibris
Review Posted Online: Oct. 28, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her...
Another middle-aged mom in a muddle.
After years of false starts and big hopes, Elizabeth’s ruggedly handsome husband Jack, a former football star, just landed a spot as a sportscaster on national news. He still loves her, even though much younger women are giving him come-hither looks. Heck, he doesn’t want to betray the love of his life after she helped him kick drugs and stuck by him even when he was a struggling has-been. And won’t it seem hypocritical if he fools around with his sexy assistant while he does in-depth reporting on a rape case involving a famous basketball center? Well, he fools around anyway. Elizabeth, nicknamed Birdie, knows nothing of this, but she withdraws from Jack when her hard-drinking, salt-of-the-earth father has a stroke and dies. Now no one will call her “sugar beet” ever again. Time to return home to Tennessee and contend with Anita, the sort-of-evil stepmother so trashy she wears pink puffy slippers all day long. Naturally, it turns out that Anita actually has a heart of gold and knows a few things about Birdie’s dead mother that were hushed up for years. Mom was an artist, just like Birdie, and an old scandal comes to light as Anita unrolls a vibrant canvas that portrays her secret lover. Perhaps, Birdie muses, her mother died of heartbreak, never having followed her true love or developed her talent. Has she, too, compromised everything she holds dear? Hoping to find out, Birdie joins a support group that promises to reconnect confused women with their passion. She and Jack separate, prompting a how-dare-you fit from their grown daughters. Will Birdie fly her empty nest? Will she go back to college for a degree in art? Will her brooding watercolors ever sell?
Soft-focus story moves right along with few surprises. This time around, Hannah avoids the soap-opera complications of her previous tales (Summer Island, 2001, etc.).Pub Date: July 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-345-45071-X
Page Count: 352
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2002
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