A gripping tale of spiritual discovery coupled with astute religious history.
A historical novel set in the first century about a young Jewish man’s encounter with Jesus Christ’s teachings.
Eli was raised in a traditionally Jewish household, and his family suffered at the hands of Roman persecution. His father, Galal, died during a rebellion; now, his mother frets about Eli’s fascination with Jesus, whose teachings she considers rank blasphemy. Eli, however, is skeptically drawn to the teachings, initially; he’s impressed by the devotion of Jesus’ martyrs but also concerned about the ways that his sayings deviate from the Torah and suspicious about alleged miracles. But when Eli takes a lonely pilgrimage and has spiritual visions, aided by psychedelics, he decides that he wants to learn more about Christianity. After he witnesses the horror of the destruction of the Second Temple during the Roman siege of Jerusalem, he meets Joses, the brother of James and Jesus. Joses becomes something of a mentor to Eli and awakens him to the truly revolutionary core of Jesus’ ministry, which singularly focuses on love, and the inclusiveness that such an emphasis demands. The story also tracks Eli’s spiritual transformation through his romantic travails; he pines for a beautiful woman, Aylah, who lives outside the faith, but their union is opposed by both his mother and her violent brother, Hakim. Debut author Mitchell, who graduated from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary in Fort Worth, Texas, displays a deep knowledge of the historical period, and this erudition particularly shines through his depiction of the era’s contentious theological disputes. Eli emerges as a complex character, neither a skeptic nor a fanatical true believer: “Eli considered himself more a seeker than an agnostic. He knew he didn’t know the truth, and he didn’t claim to know or feel the need for certainty.” Also, within the drama, the author sketches an unconventional interpretation of Jesus’ chief message, shorn of excess doctrinal and institutional baggage, which presents his teachings as more radical than often suggested.
A gripping tale of spiritual discovery coupled with astute religious history.Pub Date: Aug. 24, 2016
ISBN: 978-1-5372-8267-1
Page Count: 224
Publisher: CreateSpace
Review Posted Online: Aug. 2, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.
Four men who meet as college roommates move to New York and spend the next three decades gaining renown in their professions—as an architect, painter, actor and lawyer—and struggling with demons in their intertwined personal lives.
Yanagihara (The People in the Trees, 2013) takes the still-bold leap of writing about characters who don’t share her background; in addition to being male, JB is African-American, Malcolm has a black father and white mother, Willem is white, and “Jude’s race was undetermined”—deserted at birth, he was raised in a monastery and had an unspeakably traumatic childhood that’s revealed slowly over the course of the book. Two of them are gay, one straight and one bisexual. There isn’t a single significant female character, and for a long novel, there isn’t much plot. There aren’t even many markers of what’s happening in the outside world; Jude moves to a loft in SoHo as a young man, but we don’t see the neighborhood change from gritty artists’ enclave to glitzy tourist destination. What we get instead is an intensely interior look at the friends’ psyches and relationships, and it’s utterly enthralling. The four men think about work and creativity and success and failure; they cook for each other, compete with each other and jostle for each other’s affection. JB bases his entire artistic career on painting portraits of his friends, while Malcolm takes care of them by designing their apartments and houses. When Jude, as an adult, is adopted by his favorite Harvard law professor, his friends join him for Thanksgiving in Cambridge every year. And when Willem becomes a movie star, they all bask in his glow. Eventually, the tone darkens and the story narrows to focus on Jude as the pain of his past cuts deep into his carefully constructed life.
The phrase “tour de force” could have been invented for this audacious novel.Pub Date: March 10, 2015
ISBN: 978-0-385-53925-8
Page Count: 720
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: Dec. 21, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 2015
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
PROFILES
PERSPECTIVES
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.
Life lessons.
Angie Malone, the youngest of a big, warm Italian-American family, returns to her Pacific Northwest hometown to wrestle with various midlife disappointments: her divorce, Papa’s death, a downturn in business at the family restaurant, and, above all, her childlessness. After several miscarriages, she, a successful ad exec, and husband Conlan, a reporter, befriended a pregnant young girl and planned to adopt her baby—and then the birth mother changed her mind. Angie and Conlan drifted apart and soon found they just didn’t love each other anymore. Metaphorically speaking, “her need for a child had been a high tide, an overwhelming force that drowned them. A year ago, she could have kicked to the surface but not now.” Sadder but wiser, Angie goes to work in the struggling family restaurant, bickering with Mama over updating the menu and replacing the ancient waitress. Soon, Angie befriends another young girl, Lauren Ribido, who’s eager to learn and desperately needs a job. Lauren’s family lives on the wrong side of the tracks, and her mother is a promiscuous alcoholic, but Angie knows nothing of this sad story and welcomes Lauren into the DeSaria family circle. The girl listens in, wide-eyed, as the sisters argue and make wisecracks and—gee-whiz—are actually nice to each other. Nothing at all like her relationship with her sluttish mother, who throws Lauren out when boyfriend David, en route to Stanford, gets her pregnant. Will Lauren, who’s just been accepted to USC, let Angie adopt her baby? Well, a bit of a twist at the end keeps things from becoming too predictable.
Heartfelt, yes, but pretty routine.Pub Date: July 1, 2004
ISBN: 0-345-46750-7
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Ballantine
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2004
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