A well-researched, if somewhat staid, spin on biblical events.
A historical novel about Jesus and Judas that delves into both men’s early days.
Readers familiar with the Christian Gospels will encounter a startling scene at the start of this biblically inspired tale. A young boy named Judas Iscariot, traveling on the road with his parents, sees another boy being bullied and beaten by a group of three other kids. He rushes over to intervene and saves the child from further harm. The boy’s name is Yeshua, and he’s the son of Yosef and Mary of Nazareth. When the two families meet, it turns out that Judas’ father, Simon, is the brother of Mary’s mother, Anne, making Yeshua and Judas cousins. The two become fast friends, and, as a result, Judas has a front-row seat for Yeshua’s rise from a provincial carpenter’s apprentice to a combative young man who increasingly dreams of overthrowing Roman rule. Readers see a well-known story through a very different lens as Yeshua’s disciples, led by Judas, become “captains” dedicated to building an insurrectionist army. A priestess named Mariam, who narrates portions of the book, joins them; Judas likens her to prominent female figures of Scripture, such as Jael and Judith (“Like these women warriors who acted bravely to save the Habirum,” he narrates, “Mariam would fight alongside us”).There are inspirational movements woven throughout the narrative—Yeshua and his followers are very much aware of Yokhanan the Baptizer’s religious activities, for instance—but, interestingly, there are virtually no supernatural moments. Yeshua is a healer, true, but one who uses herbs and other substances; in the book’s version of a familiar incident from the Gospels of Matthew and Luke, in which Jesus heals a Roman centurion’s servant, he goes to the man’s house to apply medicines rather than working a miracle. These realistic scenes seem written with an eye toward research rather than drama; the text explains everything from Palestinian politics to Roman fish sauce in laborious detail that is too seldom counterbalanced by more evocative, personal moments, as when Yosef wearily says of his quarrelsome son, “Yeshua will debate with the donkey.” However, fans of Anthony Burgess’ 1979 novel, Man of Nazareth, will likely enjoy this exploration of similar territory.
A well-researched, if somewhat staid, spin on biblical events.Pub Date: Sept. 14, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-66553-232-7
Page Count: 322
Publisher: AuthorHouse
Review Posted Online: Feb. 9, 2022
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
For devoted Hannah fans in search of a good cry.
The miseries of the Depression and Dust Bowl years shape the destiny of a Texas family.
“Hope is a coin I carry: an American penny, given to me by a man I came to love. There were times in my journey when I felt as if that penny and the hope it represented were the only things that kept me going.” We meet Elsa Wolcott in Dalhart, Texas, in 1921, on the eve of her 25th birthday, and wind up with her in California in 1936 in a saga of almost unrelieved woe. Despised by her shallow parents and sisters for being sickly and unattractive—“too tall, too thin, too pale, too unsure of herself”—Elsa escapes their cruelty when a single night of abandon leads to pregnancy and forced marriage to the son of Italian immigrant farmers. Though she finds some joy working the land, tending the animals, and learning her way around Mama Rose's kitchen, her marriage is never happy, the pleasures of early motherhood are brief, and soon the disastrous droughts of the 1930s drive all the farmers of the area to despair and starvation. Elsa's search for a better life for her children takes them out west to California, where things turn out to be even worse. While she never overcomes her low self-esteem about her looks, Elsa displays an iron core of character and courage as she faces dust storms, floods, hunger riots, homelessness, poverty, the misery of migrant labor, bigotry, union busting, violent goons, and more. The pedantic aims of the novel are hard to ignore as Hannah embodies her history lesson in what feels like a series of sepia-toned postcards depicting melodramatic scenes and clichéd emotions.
For devoted Hannah fans in search of a good cry.Pub Date: Feb. 9, 2021
ISBN: 978-1-2501-7860-2
Page Count: 464
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Nov. 17, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2020
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
A deep and grimly whimsical exploration of what it means to be a son, a father, and an artist.
A retelling of Pinocchio from Geppetto's point of view.
The novel purports to be the memoirs of Geppetto, a carpenter from the town of Collodi, written in the belly of a vast fish that has swallowed him. Fortunately for Geppetto, the fish has also engulfed a ship, and its supplies—fresh water, candles, hardtack, captain’s logbook, ink—are what keep the Swallowed Man going. (Collodi is, of course, the name of the author of the original Pinocchio.) A misfit whose loneliness is equaled only by his drive to make art, Geppetto scours his surroundings for supplies, crafting sculptures out of pieces of the ship’s wood, softened hardtack, mussel shells, and his own hair, half hoping and half fearing to create a companion once again that will come to life. He befriends a crab that lives all too briefly in his beard, then mourns when “she” dies. Alone in the dark, he broods over his past, reflecting on his strained relationship with his father and his harsh treatment of his own “son”—Pinocchio, the wooden puppet that somehow came to life. In true Carey fashion, the author illustrates the novel with his own images of his protagonist’s art: sketches of Pinocchio, of woodworking tools, of the women Geppetto loved; photos of driftwood, of tintypes, of a sculpted self-portrait with seaweed hair. For all its humor, the novel is dark and claustrophobic, and its true subject is the responsibilities of creators. Remembering the first time he heard of the sea monster that was to swallow him, Geppetto wonders if the monster is somehow connected to Pinocchio: “The unnatural child had so thrown the world off-balance that it must be righted at any cost, and perhaps the only thing with the power to right it was a gigantic sea monster, born—I began to suppose this—just after I cracked the world by making a wooden person.” Later, contemplating his self-portrait bust, Geppetto asks, “Monster of the deep. Am I, then, the monster? Do I nightmare myself?”
A deep and grimly whimsical exploration of what it means to be a son, a father, and an artist.Pub Date: Jan. 26, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-593-18887-3
Page Count: 208
Publisher: Riverhead
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2020
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2020
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