A short, earnest novel which seeks to evangelize by example.
A pensive debut work of Christian fiction that uses the story of a reflective father to explore how people grow toward, or away from, faith over a lifetime.
Thirty-year-old John Christian is content with his life when he receives a startling phone call: His childhood friend Derrick has unexpectedly died. As John recalls his friend’s life, he begins to wonder whether Derrick’s once-lost soul found its way to Christ. His death becomes the impetus for personal introspection. John, a man of faith, is grateful that, whatever disasters befall him, he’s headed toward a home in heaven. Subsequent chapters address various challenges to his faith during his lifetime, including the temptations of disobedience, sex and general carousing. John admits that as a youth, he was as susceptible as anyone to worldly temptations, but his occasional stumbles were outweighed by his overall commitment to saying “no” in God’s name. However, readers may find that John’s conception of a faithful life is somewhat sterile: Christians don’t, in his view, ever curse, use addictive substances, sass their parents, engage in lusty activities, or deviate from the conceptions in Epistles of Paul, and he offers New Testament verses to support these notions. As a result, the book may find a readership among conservative Christians but not among those who engage in more liberal theology. John is convinced that those who don’t live according to literal interpretations of the Gospels won’t make it to heaven, but he has no malice for those who fall outside of salvation’s bounds. Griffin’s book is a quick, involving read, and some will find John a comforting, familiar character. His storytelling manner is given to puns and colloquialisms (“[W]e would make plans to go out when our schedules would agree—or when we just made them agree”) which helps to lighten the delivery. Still, the book’s absolutism is sometimes discomfiting; for example, the idea that single people can’t support the concept of marriage “because they aren’t married” is otherwise unexamined.
A short, earnest novel which seeks to evangelize by example.Pub Date: Oct. 30, 2013
ISBN: 978-1462732531
Page Count: 116
Publisher: CrossBooks Publishing
Review Posted Online: Jan. 22, 2014
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Hoffman (The Red Garden, 2011, etc.) births literature from tragedy: the destruction of Jerusalem's Temple, the siege of Masada and the loss of Zion.
This is a feminist tale, a story of strong, intelligent women wedded to destiny by love and sacrifice. Told in four parts, the first comes from Yael, daughter of Yosef bar Elhanan, a Sicarii Zealot assassin, rejected by her father because of her mother's death in childbirth. It is 70 CE, and the Temple is destroyed. Yael, her father, and another Sicarii assassin, Jachim ben Simon, and his family flee Jerusalem. Hoffman's research renders the ancient world real as the group treks into Judea's desert, where they encounter Essenes, search for sustenance and burn under the sun. There too Jachim and Yael begin a tragic love affair. At Masada, Yael is sent to work in the dovecote, gathering eggs and fertilizer. She meets Shirah, her daughters, and Revka, who narrates part two. Revka's husband was killed when Romans sacked their village. Later, her daughter was murdered. At Masada, caring for grandsons turned mute by tragedy, Revka worries over her scholarly son-in-law, Yoav, now consumed by vengeance. Aziza, daughter of Shirah, carries the story onward. Born out of wedlock, Aziza grew up in Moab, among the people of the blue tunic. Her passion and curse is that she was raised as a warrior by her foster father. In part four, Shirah tells of her Alexandrian youth, the cherished daughter of a consort of the high priests. Shirah is a keshaphim, a woman of amulets, spells and medicine, and a woman connected to Shechinah, the feminine aspect of God. The women are irretrievably bound to Eleazar ben Ya'ir, Masada's charismatic leader; Amram, Yael's brother; and Yoav, Aziza's companion and protector in battle. The plot is intriguingly complex, with only a single element unresolved. An enthralling tale rendered with consummate literary skill.
Pub Date: Oct. 4, 2011
ISBN: 978-1-4516-1747-4
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Scribner
Review Posted Online: April 5, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: April 15, 2011
Constructed with delicacy, lyricism, and care, Hertmans’ novel still feels occasionally static.
A Christian woman and a Jewish man fall in love in medieval France.
In 1088, a Christian girl of Norman descent falls in love with the son of a rabbi. They run away together, to disastrous effect: Her father sends knights after them, and though they flee to a small southern village where they spend a few happy years, their budding family is soon decimated by a violent wave of First Crusaders on their way to Jerusalem. The girl, whose name becomes Hamoutal when she converts to Judaism, winds up roaming the world. Hertmans’ (War and Turpentine, 2016, etc.) latest novel is based on a true story: The Cairo Genizah, a trove of medieval manuscripts preserved in an Egyptian synagogue, contained an account of Hamoutal’s plight. Hamoutal makes up about half of Hertmans’ novel; the other half is consumed by Hertmans’ own interest in her story. Whenever he can, he follows her journey: from Rouen, where she grew up, to Monieux, where she and David Todros—her Jewish husband—made a brief life for themselves, and all the way to Cairo, and back. “Knowing her life story and its tragic end,” Hertmans writes, “I wish I could warn her of what lies ahead.” The book has a quiet intimacy to it, and in his descriptions of landscape and travel, Hertmans’ prose is frequently lovely. In Narbonne, where David’s family lived, Hertmans describes “the cool of the paving stones in the late morning, the sound of doves’ wings flapping in the immaculate air.” But despite the drama of Hamoutal’s story, there is a static quality to the book, particularly in the sections where Hertmans describes his own travels. It’s an odd contradiction: Hertmans himself moves quickly through the world, but his book doesn’t quite move quickly enough.
Constructed with delicacy, lyricism, and care, Hertmans’ novel still feels occasionally static.Pub Date: Feb. 4, 2020
ISBN: 978-1-5247-4708-4
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Pantheon
Review Posted Online: Oct. 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Nov. 1, 2019
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