An often remarkable, if sometimes slow-paced, extension of an ancient tale.
A work of historical fiction that reimagines the biblical story of Cain and Abel from the perspective of Cain’s wife, Akliah.
Banished from the Garden of Eden, the family of Adam and Eve place their hopes for eventual return in Cain, who’s prophesied to kill the Serpent responsible for their exile. However, Cain dithers and becomes increasingly irreverent toward the family and their God. Still, his younger sister, Akliah, pines to become his wife, and when she learns that her older sister, Luluwa, has been promised to him by Adam, she conspires to take her place. Cain is seduced by Lilith, a beautiful ally of the Serpent who convinces him that God is a lying despot. Cain refuses to crush the Serpent and instead intends to populate the Earth with children by both Luluwa and Lilith. After he kills his brother, Abel, he heads east of Eden with Akliah and attempts to establish a new city at Nod to rival the Garden. God marks Cain so that no man can kill him and curses the land so it won’t yield food, which only makes Cain more defiant. Akliah is impregnated by Cain and learns of another family—the descendants of Eli. She falls for Eli’s son, Gabril, but is ashamed to tell him of her past and goes on to live a tortured life. Author Hoefling (Journey to God, 2010) seamlessly combines her extraordinary mastery of early biblical tales with a spirit of inventive creativity, weaving a story that both embellishes but also preserves the original story. The prose has a rhetorical style that’s often powerful in its simplicity: “I was charged with the sacred duty of preparing Eden for all of humanity to enjoy,” Adam says at one point. “Yet I did not have enough mastery over myself to do the one thing needful.” The plot sometimes slows to a saunter that’s much too leisurely, especially when retelling the story from the book of Genesis. Nonetheless, this is a gripping account that only deepens an inherited tale about the birth of mankind and about good and evil.
An often remarkable, if sometimes slow-paced, extension of an ancient tale.Pub Date: June 6, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-5127-8798-6
Page Count: 344
Publisher: Westbow Press
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2017
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it...
Harris, creator of grand, symphonic thrillers from Fatherland (1992) to An Officer and a Spy (2014), scores with a chamber piece of a novel set in the Vatican in the days after a fictional pope dies.
Fictional, yes, but the nameless pontiff has a lot in common with our own Francis: he’s famously humble, shunning the lavish Apostolic Palace for a small apartment, and he is committed to leading a church that engages with the world and its problems. In the aftermath of his sudden death, rumors circulate about the pope’s intention to fire certain cardinals. At the center of the action is Cardinal Lomeli, Dean of the College of Cardinals, whose job it is to manage the conclave that will elect a new pope. He believes it is also his duty to uncover what the pope knew before he died because some of the cardinals in question are in the running to succeed him. “In the running” is an apt phrase because, as described by Harris, the papal conclave is the ultimate political backroom—albeit a room, the Sistine Chapel, covered with Michelangelo frescoes. Vying for the papal crown are an African cardinal whom many want to see as the first black pope, a press-savvy Canadian, an Italian arch-conservative (think Cardinal Scalia), and an Italian liberal who wants to continue the late pope’s campaign to modernize the church. The novel glories in the ancient rituals that constitute the election process while still grounding that process in the real world: the Sistine Chapel is fitted with jamming devices to thwart electronic eavesdropping, and the pressure to act quickly is increased because “rumours that the pope is dead are already trending on social media.”
An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it is pure temptation.Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-451-49344-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016
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
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