A creative historical dramatization that falls short of a nuanced portrait of its principal character.
A writer offers a literary reimagining of Judas’ betrayal of Jesus in this novel.
Judas Iscariot couldn’t have come from more inauspicious beginnings. He endured abject poverty; his father was a violent drunk and his mother an opportunistic harlot. Judas flees Kerioth penniless with dreams of making it to Jerusalem and finding respectable work and even a wife. In the barren heat of the desert, he meets John the Baptist, who recommends that Judas locate Jesus, now an itinerant preacher with a following of disciples. Judas heeds his counsel, but not before purloining one of John’s water bags, justifying his theft by dint of need. Judas encounters Jesus and is delighted to be quickly made the “keeper of the purse,” replacing Matthew, the former tax collector. In addition, Jesus promises to teach Judas to read and write, a profoundly important aspiration for someone so taken with his own “imagined cleverness and ambition.” But Judas is never all that impressed with Jesus’ ministry and becomes frustrated with the deprivations to which he is daily subjected: “I’m sick of begging for Jesus and his lazy friends. Talk about leading astray. From now on, the money I earn, I keep for myself. He and his friends can beg for the rest of their lives without me.” Judas is eventually recruited by a powerful member of the Sanhedrin, Simon, who persuades him with a combination of financial reward and blackmail to turn on Jesus. Heil (The War Less Civil, 2012) inventively fills in the historical and scriptural blanks—not much is known about Judas, a rich fictional opportunity for a writer. In addition, the author intelligently conjures the dynamic of Jesus’ band of apostles and followers, not all of whom are as trusting of Judas as Jesus is. Martha, Lazarus’ sister, loathes him with surprisingly unrestrained rancor. But Heil’s depiction of Judas lacks psychological nuance—the man’s coarse self-interest and sensitivity to mortification are so acute, it’s hard to accept his remorse after betraying Jesus, let alone his experience of “spiritual despair and isolation.”
A creative historical dramatization that falls short of a nuanced portrait of its principal character.Pub Date: Sept. 1, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-692-18589-6
Page Count: 184
Publisher: Lake Lore Press, LLC
Review Posted Online: April 29, 2019
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
BOOK REVIEW
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
A first novel, this is also a first person account of Scout's (Jean Louise) recall of the years that led to the ending of a mystery, the breaking of her brother Jem's elbow, the death of her father's enemy — and the close of childhood years. A widower, Atticus raises his children with legal dispassion and paternal intelligence, and is ably abetted by Calpurnia, the colored cook, while the Alabama town of Maycomb, in the 1930's, remains aloof to their divergence from its tribal patterns. Scout and Jem, with their summer-time companion, Dill, find their paths free from interference — but not from dangers; their curiosity about the imprisoned Boo, whose miserable past is incorporated in their play, results in a tentative friendliness; their fears of Atticus' lack of distinction is dissipated when he shoots a mad dog; his defense of a Negro accused of raping a white girl, Mayella Ewell, is followed with avid interest and turns the rabble whites against him. Scout is the means of averting an attack on Atticus but when he loses the case it is Boo who saves Jem and Scout by killing Mayella's father when he attempts to murder them. The shadows of a beginning for black-white understanding, the persistent fight that Scout carries on against school, Jem's emergence into adulthood, Calpurnia's quiet power, and all the incidents touching on the children's "growing outward" have an attractive starchiness that keeps this southern picture pert and provocative. There is much advance interest in this book; it has been selected by the Literary Guild and Reader's Digest; it should win many friends.
Pub Date: July 11, 1960
ISBN: 0060935464
Page Count: 323
Publisher: Lippincott
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1960
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
SEEN & HEARD
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