A robust, captivating account of the life of Jesus in Roman-occupied Palestine.
Lamensdorf (The Mexican Gardener, 2013, etc.) imagines the life of Jesus in this revisionist historical novel.
There have been so many takes on the life of Jesus that even those books that seek to be controversial are hard-pressed to come up with new angles. The Jesus of Lamensdorf’s novel is not the figure from Christian Sunday schools. His ministry was inspired in part by the murder of his wife and children—and yet he falls well within the recognizable parameters of a historical Jesus figure. Lamensdorf places Jesus (or Joshua, as he is called by his fellow Jews) at the center of a political struggle in which the Roman occupation of the Jews’ homeland has created a situation of antagonism, violence, and rebellion. Young Joshua is of humble origins, and through his character, the author attempts to demonstrate how a love of God and people can brush up against the deadly threshing machine of an empire. From the stony hills of Galilee to the teeming streets of Jerusalem, the novel explores just what it means to be a Messiah, a miracle worker, and to save humanity from its own sins. “He knew they loved him, these people of Israel,” the author writes of Joshua, “and he loved them, too, every one of them. And he would save them, of that he was certain.” Lamensdorf is a talented writer, and the ambitiously detailed Galilee of the novel is highly immersive. The book’s heavily researched milieu possesses the heft of authority that fans of historical fiction crave. An unnecessary framing narrative set in modern times delays the real story, but once the reader gets to Nazareth in 5 B.C.E., the plot begins to gallop. The author is more interested in providing the political context for Jesus’ movement—where Romans are the clear villains—than he is in changing religious opinions. There are many books about Jesus, but this one is more compelling than most.
A robust, captivating account of the life of Jesus in Roman-occupied Palestine.Pub Date: Nov. 15, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-9852381-0-0
Page Count: 718
Publisher: SeaScape Press
Review Posted Online: Jan. 23, 2017
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 15, 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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