A peculiarly colorless portrait of Jesus that lacks the insights of a nonfiction inquiry into the biblical figure or the...
A fictional tale details the life of Jesus, from boyhood to crucifixion and beyond.
In this historical novel, Malmed (Carmen’s Journey, 2015) gives his version of the Jesus story, starting with the figure as an inquisitive lad who questions his father about religious practices such as animal sacrifice. Later, “out of the blue,” Jesus announces he will go “into the wilderness to think.” Following religious studies in Egypt, Jesus spends time with Judas. They visit Essenes who want to reform corrupt religious practices, such as Sadducee priests raking in exorbitant sums for their services in Jerusalem. Judas and other sicarii murder and maim some Roman soldiers. Jesus meets Zealots—“an underground guerrilla force” of Jews resisting the Roman occupation—and returns to Nazareth to preach but is met with derision and notes that “a prophet is without honor in his own land.” He ponders taking up carpentry or teaching because his “chosen career path had a large roadblock in it.” As the Pax Romana wears thin, Jesus enters Jerusalem and disrupts the moneylenders at the Temple. The Romans seize Jesus and question Judas about whether Jesus is a Zealot, ultimately executing Judas but trying to make it look like a suicide. After Jewish leaders refuse to implicate Jesus as a revolutionary, he appears before Pontius Pilate, who orders him crucified. Following Jesus’ death, his body mysteriously disappears. Ten years later, a local teacher named Isaac interviews the elderly scholar Nicodemus about Jesus’ mission and whereabouts. The author raises some superb questions about Jesus’ life and purpose. But Malmed delivers too much creaky exposition, compounding the problem by repeating pedagogical asides, such as an exploration of who the Zealots were, the intricacies of Jewish coins, and the explanation that Herod’s family converted to Judaism, rather than seamlessly weaving facts into the book’s action and dialogue. The latter is often stilted, trite, and anachronistic. Jesus says things like “Whoa! I don’t like that one bit” and “Tomorrow is another day.” Malmed is at his strongest when he attempts to explain Jesus’ aims, but even here his conclusions, voiced via a Q-and-A between Isaac and Nicodemus, are vague.
A peculiarly colorless portrait of Jesus that lacks the insights of a nonfiction inquiry into the biblical figure or the poetry and power of the New Testament.Pub Date: Oct. 15, 2015
ISBN: 978-1-5049-5289-7
Page Count: 170
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Nov. 7, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
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
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 REVIEW
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