An imaginative plot and some lively dialogue can’t overcome the forced eccentricity of the characters and their facile...
An unhappy performance artist imagines herself as a sacrificial lamb in this debut novel.
As the founder and editor of the ’zine Hip Mama, Gore challenged the belief that motherhood barred women from a hipster cultural scene and tapped into a readership that wanted to rewrite traditional social roles. Her insight forms the basis of this novel, in which an unlikely band of social misfits create a traveling performance-art show organized around saints, resurrections and redemptions. Behind the scenes, they come together as a family; they seek romance, take care of a child and nurture each other’s fragile egos. Frankka, the narrator and star of the show, is a stigmatic, able to replicate the wounds Jesus received on the cross. Her fellow performers include a trapeze artist, a psychic, a drag queen and a moody Italian firebreather who imagines the troupe as his salvation. The narrative alternates between Frankka’s account of her disaffection with her theatrical life—which intensifies following a newspaper article that leads to questions about her authenticity—and her brief, breezy introductions to the lives of various Catholic saints. Despite being rather overcrowded with saints and sinners alike, the story never quite takes off. The characters’ tormented relationship with their own pasts is strangely flat, their quirkiness studied and unconvincing. Even the narrator’s soul-searching, which often takes the form of extended and rather labored meditations on Catholic rituals and symbols, seems contrived and forced. The author has a nice ear for dialogue, and there are moments when Frankka’s diffuse anger and loneliness come alive, but her insistence that Frankka—and by extension her fellow performers—are already suffering saints gives this work an annoyingly moralistic quality in which we learn a lesson about our common humanity.
An imaginative plot and some lively dialogue can’t overcome the forced eccentricity of the characters and their facile insights.Pub Date: May 1, 2006
ISBN: 0-06-085428-6
Page Count: 240
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2006
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
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
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