An inventive and gripping work of historical fiction focusing on Jesus.
Jesus embarks on youthful adventures and deals with family expectations before discovering his divine mission in this debut novel.
Joseph is a wealthy builder living north of Jerusalem in the first century, accustomed to making necessary compromises as a Jew living under the Roman occupation of Israel. But he has high hopes that his first-born son, James, will one day become an important holy man, even the high priest of the Temple, and help re-establish Israel’s spiritual independence from its oppressors. Meanwhile, Joseph intends for his second-born son, Jesus, a rambunctiously mischievous 12-year-old at the start of the story, to eventually take over the family business and marry. Andersen imaginatively conjures a dramatic chronicle of Jesus’ upbringing before his ministry, a gradual process that follows his youthful introduction to Buddhist meditation and a fateful communication from God after he encounters his cousin John boldly baptizing new disciples. While being baptized himself, Jesus is finally given his divine assignment from God, a continuation of the work of John: “John has reminded the people to fear me. That is an important first step, and his name will be remembered for countless generations as one of my prophets. Now for the next step, I want you to remind them to love me.” But as Jesus’ teaching attracts greater attention and disciples, Roman leaders pursue the man who proposes an authority even greater than their own. In addition, violence threatens to erupt and swallow the Jewish population whole as radical insurgents intent on overthrowing Roman rule plan to strike. Andersen vividly depicts the political and theological cleavages in Jerusalem created by Roman tyranny—a Jewish people turned against themselves. The author is particularly strong dramatizing the religious devastation wrought by despotism—James considers his most dangerous adversaries to be the Sadducees, members of a sect that sacrificed its spiritual integrity by bribing its tormentors for political gain. Jesus’ preaching is intelligently situated within this historical context with notable narrative subtlety and scholarly authenticity, a primarily spiritual program with significant political ramifications. The highlight of Andersen’s fictional rendering, though, is the reconstruction of Jesus’ family life, a provocative departure from the more traditional scriptural version. In this retelling, James is the one whose divinely ordained future is foretold by prophecy, while the story of Jesus’ beginnings in Immaculate Conception is exchanged for a more quotidian, mortal birth. In fact, Jesus seems an unlikely choice as a child to become a historically significant martyr—he evinces no shortage of boldness but also a great deficit of both gravity and prudence. Considering the son of God as an impetuous adolescent who is regularly bailed out of jams by his affluent father takes not only deep reserves of fictional creativity, but also authorial courage. Andersen’s prose is unfailingly clear—if sometimes bloodless and earnest. The entire story is presented as a series of shifting perspectives—readers are treated to not only Jesus’ evolving understanding of himself, but also the interpretations of his family members, a kaleidoscopic narrative artfully consolidated into a coherent whole.
An inventive and gripping work of historical fiction focusing on Jesus.Pub Date: Sept. 22, 2017
ISBN: 978-1-64082-543-7
Page Count: 382
Publisher: Page Publishing, Inc.
Review Posted Online: April 10, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2018
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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