The Book of Longings

What if Jesus married The Girl You Wish You Hadn't Started a Conversation With At A Party from SNL.

This book answers that burning question. And the answer is . . . nothing. A whole lot of nothing. Nothing would have happened if Jesus married the girl you wish you hadn't started a conversation with at a party.

Don't get me wrong, as a woman myself, I tend to agree with most of the themes and mores about women's rights that I found myself being beaten over the head with in this book. However, much of it was wildly unbelievable for what a woman of the time would want and push for and took me completely out of the story. Many of the events didn't seem organic, but forced to push a message, without subtility or art.

Anna is an annoying, whiney, self-righteous feminist taken directly from the 21st century CE and plopped into a 1st century CE setting. She is, I suspect, a bit of a self-insert by the author. She is raised in a very privileged way her whole life, given access to things that few girls were in that time, but still treats her parents like absolute garbage. Do they seem like nice people? Not really, but in a way that is unconvincing, they are just villains because it's convenient for the author and serves her purpose.

The dialogue and much of the flowery prose is cringe-worthy. Kidd uses phrasing at times that makes you feel ill and brings up long-suppressed memories of Twilight.

Anna finally ends up living among poor people when she marries Jesus. Here we encounter the magical goat Delilah. Somehow she is always milking Delilah, but Delilah never has kids that are mentioned, so how is she constantly producing milk? Also, she is apparently still alive at the time of Jesus' death. Goat life span is at most 18 years, and such an extended lifespan would have been highly unlikely in 30 CE without access to a veterinarian. During her time with poor people Anna finally goes through some character development, sort of. She is still self-absorbed and everyone who criticizes her is seen as evil.

Lets also talk about Yaltha, Anna's manipulative aunt. Yaltha wants Anna to live the life she missed out on, so she constantly manipulates Anna to believe certain things and act certain ways. This is most creepy when she convinces Anna not to pursue pregnancy again after a heartbreaking stillbirth, where afterward Anna expresses a desire to perhaps pursue motherhood with another pregnancy. But no, Yaltha says Anna has a higher calling and discourages her in trying again. How fucked is that? If Anna wants to have another baby, how about we let her make that choice? It seemed like one of the few times when the character was developing and making a choice on her own, but nope. Can't have that.

Anna continues to be a defiant, fierce womyn for the rest of the novel until, strangely enough, when she encounters Jesus carrying his cross to his crucification. Suddenly she becomes meek and powerless and whispering encouragement to him as he marches to his execution. This seemed completely out of character based on how she had been portrayed the rest of the novel. She would have stood up for anyone else, she was more upset about her magical goat getting traded than her husband getting murdered by the authorities. Perhaps this is due to him being a male, and thus his life not being worth saving. I don't know.

Wouldn't recommend unless you're really into mom group book club fiction.

What's the book version of Oscar bait? Pulitzer bait? What ever it is, this book is that. It was a very charming story, and emotional at times, but I couldn't help but feel that it was, as another reviewer put it, bible fan fiction. And I don't know that the author would necessarily disagree with that. The authors note was very honest and insightful into her concerns and thinking when deciding whether to write this story, and I found that refreshing to hear. I enjoyed how the characters were written and the over arching story was an interesting one.

But with that being said, I still just can't get over the thought that this was an easy capitalization on creating a feminist bible story, filled with headstrong, flawless women and modern motivations. I'm torn on the purpose of this story. It is clearly centered on Ana, the wife of Jesus, but it is so focused on her that Jesus is not present for the vast majority of the book. He only exists as someone to be, well, longed after off screen (off page?). One might argue that is the purpose of the story: focus on Ana as Jesus already has his own story. But to that, my response would be -- why make it about Jesus at all? What additional insights were we supposed to walk away with by making this a Jesus love story that he was hardly present in?

Would this have been a stronger story if it was not about the bible? No, probably not. As historical fiction, it fell flat because the characters felt far too modern, so maybe the only way to salvage it WAS to associate it with the bible. But I also didn't feel that this story challenged the reader to reconsider how they approach Christian texts. It was literally just bible fan fiction.

Better than I’d expected but not as good as I’d hoped.

It was kind of like Jesus fanfic, if you can envision a weird parallel universe in which Jesus was compassionate, thoughtful, and loving; in which he preached nonviolence and kindness to the less fortunate. (There are, I hear, scattered pockets of Christianity that hold these heretical views.)

But this is not a book about Jesus. Fanfic veers into the interesting side channels not covered in the canon, good fanfic keeps the focus there with only occasional obligatory nods to the characters and events hardcoded in the mythology. This is good fanfic. Ana is a rich person in her own right, as are the characters in her orbit, and Kidd paints a convincing picture of daily life in an age of inequality, cruelty, misogyny and corruption. How fortunate we are today, that such concepts are almost-forgotten historical footnotes!

I was surprised by Kidd’s decision to make Ana unsympathetic or at least not entirely likable. Ana is entitled and impulsive. There are many ways to express this in first-person narration, but Kidd writes her as unapologetic and even a little oblivious—which makes her more believable and, paradoxically, a little more sympathetic. This added a complexity that almost, but not quite, bumps the book to five stars.

But, overall, it was unevenly great. The writing is overly simple, declarative, bordering on YA. A touch more heavyhanded than it needed to be. There were occasional mystical elements (hazy dreams and premonitions) that added nothing of substance. And, sigh: corn? A crescent moon rising at sunset? Were those not caught, or were they caught and deliberately approved in hopes readers wouldn’t notice?