Play Book Tag discussion

Whew. This one is tough.

If I could rate this book on the quality of its writing alone, I'd rate it 10 stars. If I could rate it for its setting and the depth of historical research, the same. The Book of Longings is an exquisitely written novel, set in first century Galilee and Egypt. I could drink in the descriptions of the time and place alone and be content.

But this is a novel. It's a fictional imagining of the wife of Jesus, a woman named Ana.

This in itself isn't what is difficult for me. On the contrary, given what I know about the time period, I think it's quite likely the historical Jesus was married. As the author points out, it was the overwhelming custom at the time where he lived, and it is sadly true that women always have a way of being erased from history. If Jesus had a wife, we know nothing about her. That in itself is a tragedy.

I think Sue Monk Kidd did a lovely job of imagining Ana, an intelligent and artistically talented woman in a time and place that had no care for such women. I also liked what we saw of Jesus as a character. He seemed a lot like how I've always pictured him. Full disclosure: I'm now agnostic with a favorable tilt toward Islam, but I grew up Catholic and attended 12 years of Catholic school, so I know all the gospel stories like the back of my hand and studied their historical context in high school. Because of this, perhaps I come to this novel with a lot more knowledge than a more secular reader would – I caught all the biblical references long before the author pointed them out in her note in the back. I appreciated most of them, and found them interesting and thought-provoking takes on the traditional stories. (view spoiler)[I think my favorite is the depiction of Ana as the "adulterous woman" whom Jesus saves by demanding of the rioting crowd, "May those without sin cast the first stone." I always wondered why this woman was unnamed, and I think the depiction in this novel perfectly encompasses the author's wider thesis of woman being erased throughout history. (hide spoiler)]

The problem, I guess, is that I felt like Ana's story and Jesus's were often at odds with each other. I liked Ana's story in its own right, but knowing she was tied to Jesus, I spent a lot of the time waiting for it to link back up with his. And it does so surprisingly little. She's essentially with him for the most boring years of his life – the unrecorded years of his life between age 12 and 30 – and this section of the book is accordingly dull. Then, just when things start to pick up at the time Jesus begins his ministry, which the author is right to point out is actually joining a revolutionary movement against Rome, Ana is banished from his presence for two years. (view spoiler)[She arrives back just in time to witness his gruesome wrongful execution, which struck me as both a little too convenient and bordering on torture porn, since she and the reader are not afforded any time to catch up with what happened to her husband in the last two years before she's forced to confront him broken and bloody, carrying the cross in the street. She also happens to witness Judas Iscariot – who in this world is also her adopted brother – confess that he betrayed Jesus. However, she's been also not spoken to him for so long that it's difficult to believe his motivation, and the scene at large rings a little hollow. (hide spoiler)]

I found it strange that despite Kidd's fabulous feminist premise, and the insistence that Ana as a character is someone with thoughts and opinions, who above all yearns to be a voice – that she maintains a strangely apolitical stance throughout the entire book, despite literally being surrounded by revolutionaries. Jesus is a revolutionary. Judas is a revolutionary, even more devout than her husband. Jesus brings revolutionaries home to dinner. Ana and Jesus travel to meet John the Baptist and get baptized in the Jordan River, surrounded by revoted followers of these revolutionaries. And yet, she never yearns to join them, even though they could certainly use her. The novel is relentless with reminding us that women have no rights in this society. Ana is nearly married off to two vile men before Jesus. Her best friend Tabitha suffers a much worse fate (view spoiler)[getting raped by a Roman soldier and then having her tongue cut out by her father for daring to speak out against her rapist! (hide spoiler)], her closest maternal figure, her aunt Yaltha, has been horribly mistreated by the men in her life... and yet, it never seems to occur to Ana that revolution against Rome could also mean improvement for the women in her society? It struck me as a blatant blind spot in an otherwise ambitious novel.

As a result, Ana does a lot of waiting. She waits for the betrothal to her first husband to be finalized. She waits for Jesus when he's away working. She waits for word from Judas that it's safe to return to Galilee after she's been cast away into exile. She waits and waits and waits and does very little in the course of the 400-page novel. I expected and certainly wanted her to have a more active role in Jesus's rebellion against Rome and the corrupt Jewish establishment that enabled it, and I'm unsure why the author did not go this route. If she was worried about accusations about sacrilege, I imagine she wouldn't have written a story about Jesus's wife in the first place. So why not make her more active? Perhaps I'm projecting myself here, as someone who is a writer like Ana and also a social justice advocate, but why can't she be both? It would have put her closer to the central action and allowed the reader to see the escalation in the movement that propelled Jesus from an aspiring prophet to the "King of the Jews" who so threatened Rome he had to be executed for fear of insurrection.

As it stands, a lot of terrible things befall Ana, and she has limited capacity to change them. Perhaps that was by design, but it resulted in a bit of a downer read. That's why I can't give this book five stars, despite its bold premise, beautiful writing, and thoroughly researched setting. Like Ana, I just ultimately longed for more.

Great review. Thanks. I wasn't planning to read this one, but you're making me reconsider. (so I didn't peek at the spoilers)

Jgrace wrote: "Great review. Thanks. I wasn't planning to read this one, but you're making me reconsider. (so I didn't peek at the spoilers)"

Thanks. While I didn't LOVE love it, it definitely gave me a lot to think about. If you read it, let me know what you think!