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Critic's Corner
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"I WAS SEVEN YEARS OLD. What do you know when you're seven years old? All my life, or so I thought, we'd been in the city of Alexandria, in the Street of the Carpenters, with the other Galileans, and sooner or later we were going home." With such an opening sentence, Rice shows readers that her latest and most daring novel is something different. Anytime an author changes genres fans sit up and take notice, but when the "Queen of the Damned" changes from Vampires to "Christ The Lord," now that is a major leap of faith. Rice asked herself, "What did it feel like to be God and man as a child?" The answers she found turned into one of the most startling novels of 2005. Writing in the first-person perspective, Rice gives us Jesus as a child performing miracles not even he fully understands. The opening pages show Jesus denouncing a neighborhood bully who then dies, after which Jesus resurrects him. Then, Jesus' stepbrother James, recalls how Jesus fashions clay birds that miraculously come alive. These tales will not be new to those who have read the "Infancy Gospel of Thomas," a late apocryphal book that the early church rejected. Yet, the author's research of various apocryphal works as well as documented historical writings give readers a look at how ancient Christians speculated about Jesus' childhood. With the death of King Herod, Joseph decides it is time for the family to return to Galilee and to settle with other family members in Nazareth. The journey from Alexandria to Nazareth opens a new world for young Jesus. His thoughts, the conversations, and events, that take place among the group work well to show us how this journey affected Jesus. In particular, the family's stop over in Jerusalem at the Temple Mount provides great background of the times and conditions of the Jewish people. Rice offers an interesting cultural take on these conditions. The Jews had enemies other than the Romans. Even in "those days" insurgents existed who rose up after the death of Herod to rob and murder their own in the name of God and Greed. Great trouble filled Jerusalem and spilled into Galilee. The land of Judea was full of fighting and bandits hid in the Galilean hills. Arabs marched with the Romans and the Arabs burned Judean villages. Yet, in Nazareth, Joseph's clan continued their daily work and prayers and life was good. The everyday life of a young boy with his family in Nazareth is fully drawn in the simple daily tasks, exchanges of lessons at home and with the Rabbis, in songs, and Sabbath rituals. We learn that Jesus spoke Greek, Hebrew, and Aramaic even as a boy. Market places, Roman soldiers, slaves and masters, are depicted and among them a little boy who with "a tiny thought" could make the rain stop or snow to fall. Foremost, this boy questions his strange abilities which Joseph warns him to not speak of to anyone, and the boy wonders about the events of his birth that caused the family to flee into Egypt. Questions without answers cause young Jesus great confusion. At one point, the child prays, "Lord, tell me who I am. Tell me what I am to do." Imagine, if you can, how these questions weighed on the mind of the young boy. Then consider the agony of heart Mary and Joseph must have endured to not only protect him but to finally give him the answers he sought. To those who would undertake the reading of this novel, I suggest you read Rice's extensive author's notes at the end of the book where she details her research and reasons for writing this novel. The first person point of view is realistic for a young child and keeps you close and inside the protagonist's head. You will find in the reading assumptions are made and literary license taken, yet the story that evolves is more than a change of genre for this author, it is a quest. She plans a complete series detailing the life of Christ. One can only hope that she maintains the vernacular and continuity in the next volumes as well as she has in "Christ The Lord: Out of Egypt." Copyright Patricia Ann Jones
Save Up to 30% on this book at Amazon.com Jones is a published writer and book reviewer for Tulsa World newspaper. To comment on this review you may email pattij777@aol.com |
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CHRIST
THE LORD: Out of Egypt
