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Having completed the two cycles of legend to which she has devoted her career so far, Anne Rice gives us now her most ambitious and courageous book, a novel about the early years of CHRIST THE LORD, based on the Gospels and on the most respected New Testament scholarship.
The book’s power derives from the passion its author brings to the writing and the way in which she summons up the voice, the presence, the words of Jesus who tells the story.
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Anne Rice was born and raised in New Orleans, Louisiana. She holds a Master of Arts Degree in English and Creative Writing from San Francisco State University, as well as a Bachelor's Degree in Political Science. Anne has spent more of her life in California than in New Orleans, but New Orleans is her true home and provides the back drop for many of her famous novels. The French Quarter provided the setting for her first novel, Interview with the Vampire. And her ante-bellum house in the Garden District was the fictional home of her imaginary Mayfair Witches.
She is the author of over 30 books, most recently the Toby O'Dare novels Of Love and Evil, and Angel Time; the memoir, Called Out of Darkness;and her two novels about Jesus, Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt and Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana. (Anne regards Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana as her best novel.)
Anne publicly broke with organized religion in July of 2010 on moral grounds, affirming her faith in God, but refusing any longer to be called "Christian." The story attracted surprising media attention, with Rice's remarks being quoted in stories all over the world.
Anne is very active on her FaceBook Fan Page and has over 745,000 followers. She answers questions every day on the page, and also posts on a variety of topics, including literature, film, music, politics, religion, and her own writings. She welcomes discussion there on numerous topics.
Her latest novel, The Wolves of Midwinter, a sequel to The Wolf Gift and part of a werewolf series set in Northern California in the present time, will be published on October 15, 2013. In these books --- The Wolf Gift Chronicles -- Anne returns to the classic monsters and themes of supernatural literature, similar to those she explored in her Vampire Chronicles, and tales of the Mayfair Witches. Her new "man wolf" hero, Reuben Golding, is a talented young man in his twenties who suddenly discovers himself in possession of werewolf powers that catapult him into the life of a comic book style super hero. How Reuben learns to control what he is, how he discovers others who possess the same mysterious "wolf gift," and how he learns to live with what he has become --- is the main focus of the series.
Her first novel, Interview with the Vampire, was published in 1976 and has gone on to become one of the best-selling novels of all time. She continued her saga of the Vampire Lestat in a series of books, collectively known as The Vampire Chronicles, which have had both great mainstream and cult followings.
Interview with the Vampire was made into a motion picture in 1994, directed by Neil Jordan, and starring Brad Pitt, Tom Cruise, Kirsten Dunst and Antonio Banderas. Anne's novel, Feast of All Saints about the free people of color of ante-bellum New Orleans became a Showtime mini series in 2001 and is available now on dvd. The script for the mini series by John Wilder was a faithful adaptation of the novel.
Anne Rice is also the author of other novels, including The Witching Hour, Servant of the Bones, Merrick, Blackwood Farm, Blood Canticle, Violin, and Cry to Heaven. She lives in Palm Desert, California, but misses her home in New Orleans. She hopes to obtain a pied a terre in the French Quarter there some time in the near future.
The latest cultural and literary news is that Anne Rice has found Jesus, that she's become a Christian, and that she now wants her writing to reflect her newfound faith and how it's impacted her life. I don't think it's a marketing scheme - she doesn't need the help, quite frankly, and it's not really the demographic her Lestat novels have traditionally been drawing. What has happened, instead, is that a storyteller has found a new story to share, and a new story in which to participate.
Her first novel of a new series is Christ the Lord - Out of Egypt and as an avid reader but not previously a fan, I was pleasantly surprised. In the past, I've tried to read the opening chapters of a few of her other novels, but found it a chore to try to become involved emotionally with characters I ultimately had no love for. This was different, because this book tells a story with which we're already very intimately involved.
The basic premise is this: Jesus and His family have been in Egypt for seven years, sent there to escape Herod's bloody pride (Matthew 2:13-18). The story opens first person, the young Messiah telling His own story of His family's return to Galilee. The Christian reader will most probably have to get over the notion that there's nothing worthwhile to a story like this since it's not in and of itself "scriptural". Rather, because of her writing style and attention to storytelling and detail, the reader can catch a glimpse of something beyond the text - there was some untold story, some unwritten adventure, that Jesus lived out during His formative years.
As I was reading and being introduced to Jesus' extended family - all the cousins and aunts and uncles traveling with Mary and Joseph to Egypt and then back to the Promised Land - I got the distinct impression that Jesus was a Judean John Boy Walton, sharing the adventures and insights that come from having a big family, everyone having a voice and a role to play in the story. The years of relationship, the secrets of the adults kept from the innocence of the children, the interaction of the different generations, the realities of evil and good and everything that comes with sleeping and eating and living in tight quarters - those are the things that become vivid and real for the reader.
I was especially drawn into the first person narration of Jesus - where there's no gospel, nothing else written of Christ's life except His own quotes and parables as recalled by others, I felt like this liberty taken was justified. Did Jesus get sick? Did He have ultimate knowledge from the first, or did He have to learn some things like the rest of us? Did He feel revenge or fear or confusion? What kinds of questions did Jesus ask the teachers that prepared Him for His own questions and stories later on? There might be some issues to be taken doctrinally, but I think it misses the point to make this a theological exercise more than an artistic one. Rice has written her story, sharing her vision perhaps of what Jesus' story was like, even as she's now entered into it with her own talents and weaknesses, all of which probably pour out of this text in an entertaining and enlightening way.
The novel is quite a tour de force. Here are some initial impressions. Your mileage of course may vary.
1) Anne Rice has carefully done her homework. I read her Author's Note first (starting page 305), mostly because I wanted to know how she wrote this novel. I'm embarrassed to admit it, but there's a bunch of background information I should have known but didn't. For example, I didn't know anything -- or maybe I've forgotten, I'm nearly 50 -- about Herod Archelaus except that he was Herod's son. But being a wise technical writer, I did a Google search and found a great website that satisfied nearly every niggling historical question I could think of.
[...]
3) I liked how slowly the story of Jesus unfolded as a seven year old boy. In one sense, the entire novel is an extended meditation on St Luke's wondrous words: "And Jesus increased in wisdom and in stature, and in favor with God and man." (Luke 2:52)
Anne Rice demonstrates a certain apophatic restraint in how the young Jesus comes to understand Who He Is. Eastern Orthodox readers who can appreciate mystery ("I will not speak of Your mystery to Your enemies") will certainly appreciate how certain characters (for example, Elizabeth, the mother of John the Forerunner) only discloses certain revelations when it's appropriate to do so. Characters just don't blabber out profound mysteries. Holy mysteries are treated with respect.
Some quirks emerge in Rice's novel. Maybe it just shows how wacko I have become that I loved them. I didn't mind Elizabeth sending John to live out with the Essences after she dies. I didn't mind Joseph, the BVM, and Jesus living in Alexandria and meeting Philo the famous Jewish philosopher! Later, Cleopas, one of the uncles of Jesus, even gives two manuscripts of Philo to a rabbi in Nazareth as a problem. I was charmed. Finally, I didn't mind Jesus performing certain miracles when he was a kid. They really do make sense in the context of the novel. If I can swallow the Protoevangelium of St James, a couple of pseudepigraphical miracles (from the Infancy Gospel of Thomas) shouldn't give me theological indigestion. It wasn't that long ago stories like that gave me The Willies. Maybe this is proof positive that I'm not a Fundamentalist Bible Banger anymore after all!?!?!?
I must admit that it took me nearly 121 pages before I could fully suspend my disbelief. But then Anne Rice snagged me hook-line-and-sinker.
4) What I liked best about the novel is just how Jewish Jesus is. The Jewishness of Jesus in Anne Rice's writing is carefully depicted, right down to some of the gentle humor. (But don't expect any Woody Allen or Mel Brooks jokes!) The character of Jesus is molded in the context of living first-century Judaism. This is where Anne Rice's historical research paid off in spades. For example, Jesus is certainly trilingual, and maybe even quadri-lingual. He knows Greek, Aramaic, Hebrew, and perhaps even a smattering of Latin.
Chapter 17 especially enchanted me. Rice describes the young Jesus meeting three rabbis in the Nazareth synagogue for the first time. The oldest rabbi throws out a series of trick questions to the young Jesus, to test His knowledge of the Law and the Prophets. The Q+A scene is wonderful. Immediately I thought of young Reuven Malter before Reb Saunders in Chaim Potok's magnificent novel, The Chosen. Anne Rice really did a great job of emphasizing the sheer Jewishness of Jesus. The young Jesus she depicts could have been Danny Saunders or David Lurie, other characters out of the novels of Chaim Potok (of blessed memory).
5) In Anne Rice's novel, the young Jesus comes to realize He shouldn't make it snow or stop raining willy-nilly. He understands at an early age that He must only do what the Father wills. Admittedly, this is a very difficult truth to hear and do. Like Jesus, we should seek to give up our opinions and deliberations. Perfect freedom is only in obedience to the will of the Father. All else is slavery to the forces of darkness.
The process of self-discovery is hard enough for any young adult. What must it have been like for the Son of the Living God? Anne Rice attempts to get inside the head of the seven year-old Jesus as he gradually learns about the circumstances of his birth and their implications on the meaning of his life.
The dual nature of Christ is the mystery of mysteries. How would Jesus, fully human and fully divine, think and act? Writing in the first person, Rice portrays a boy with questions, worries, and doubts; but also with an inner calm and wisdom just strong enough to suggest the divine. But her young Jesus speaks and thinks with the vocabulary and simplicity of a child (more like a fifteen year-old, actually). This results in a narrative that is somewhat flat and repetitive. Compounding the problem is the plot itself. The story begins with the Holy Family returning to Nazareth from Egypt, with Jesus trying to learn more about the mysteries of his birth he is vaguely aware of. Since we all know the answers, the process of discovery which consumes the whole book becomes rather tedious; I found myself thinking, "come on, tell him already!".
Still, Rice paints an extraordinarily detailed, believable and beautiful portrait of Christ. The book is incredibly well researched. (In fact, the afterword in which Rice discusses her research and her return to the Catholic Church is almost as interesting as the novel itself.) The reader sees the daily life and society of the Jews under Roman occupation in all its beauty and ugliness. One element of the novel I particulary enjoyed was how Rice rehabilitates Joseph. A often neglected or ignored figure in theology and history, Joseph stands out here as a model of fatherhood-- courageous, wise, steady, firm, loving, almost heroic. He is the Father of Our Lord writ small, as it should be.
If you are expecting a page-turner like one of her vampire books, you will be disappointed. If you are looking for a real glimpse of Jesus and the genesis of Christianity, you will not be!
I agree in the fact that the book isn't very good imo. I have no personal knowledge of Christians getting angry over negative remarks, but if that is the case, it is just silly. If they liked the content, writing style, etc of the book, well fine...that is their opinion. But to get angry and... Read more
Why should this discussion be heated? I thought the purpose of these forums/reviews was to discuss opinions about the novel and not theological debates about the reality of Jesus or personal attacks against Anne Rice.
Having just arrived here, of course I don't know which reviews your referring to... but is it possible that they were reported for Abuse & thereby deleted? I know in the past I've read "reviews" here on Amazon.com that weren't really reviews of the book...
