Rice’s Christ is both convincing and compelling. Another winner.
Rice continues the story of Jesus, which she began with 2005’s stunning Out of Egypt.
Silent Hannah, a deaf mute, claws the air. She’s just heard that her brother, the Orphan, and Yitra, another beautiful boy, have been stoned by a viciously self-righteous crowd. The murdered boys were doomed by rumors of their forbidden love. Comforting Hannah with his strange serenity, is Yeshua bar Joseph, or Yeshua the Sinless, another townsman about whom the Nazarenes whisper: Past 30 and still unmarried? Fitfully sure of his destiny—his spiritual intuitions come upon him like spasms—Jesus senses that ordinary life is divinely denied him. He is smitten with Avigail, Silent Hannah’s best friend and the town’s angelic beauty, but knows that his love must be chaste. So when marauding brigands attempt to kidnap her, his rescue of the girl is tender but irreproachable. Not so, however, believes her furiously possessive father. Sealing her into his house, he makes her a horrific example of shunning; with patriarchal perversity, he blames the almost-rape victim for “allowing” herself to be attacked. And Jesus becomes suspect, with Avigail’s father making insinuations about the young people’s connection. To find her shelter, Jesus journeys to Cana, there to petition the scribe Hananel to intercede. Its subplots detailing the machinations of Pontius Pilate and Herod Antipas, the Essene struggle toward a purer faith and the flight of some of Jesus’s comrades to Athens to study philosophy, this is painstakingly researched historical fiction.
Rice’s Christ is both convincing and compelling. Another winner.Pub Date: March 4, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-4000-4352-1
Page Count: 256
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: June 24, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2008
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
Deep schmaltz in the Bible Belt.
Christian-fiction writer Martin (The Dead Don’t Dance, not reviewed) chronicles the personal tragedy of a Georgia heart surgeon.
Five years ago in Atlanta, Reese could not save his beloved wife Emma from heart failure, even though the Harvard-trained surgeon became a physician so that he could find a way to fix his childhood sweetheart’s congenitally faulty ticker. He renounced practicing medicine after her death and now lives in quiet anonymity as a boat mechanic on Lake Burton. Across the lake is Emma’s brother Charlie, who was rendered blind on the same desperate night that Reese fought to revive his wife on their kitchen floor. When Reese helps save the life of a seven-year-old local girl named Annie, who turns out to have irreparable heart damage, he is compassionately drawn into her case. He also grows close to Annie’s attractive Aunt Cindy and gradually comes to recognize that the family needs his expertise as a transplant surgeon. Martin displays some impressive knowledge about medical practice and the workings of the heart, but his Christian message is not exactly subtle. “If anything in this universe reflects the fingerprint of God, it is the human heart,” Reese notes of his medical studies. Emma’s letters (kept in a bank vault) quote Bible verse; Charlie elucidates stories of Jesus’ miracles for young Annie; even the napkins at the local bar, The Well, carry passages from the Gospel of John for the benefit of the biker clientele. Moreover, Martin relentlessly hammers home his sentimentality with nature-specific metaphors involving mating cardinals and crying crickets. (Annie sells crickets as well as lemonade to raise money for her heart surgery.) Reese’s habitual muttering of worldly slogans from Milton and Shakespeare (“I am ashes where once I was fire”) doesn’t much cut the cloying piety, and an over-the-top surgical save leaves the reader feeling positively bruised.
Deep schmaltz in the Bible Belt.Pub Date: April 4, 2006
ISBN: 1-5955-4054-7
Page Count: 320
Publisher: WestBow/Thomas Nelson
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 2006
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