![]() ![]() At first, Ana’s a typical American teenager - she slams doors, lies and sulks. ![]() She happens to have a brother called Judas Iscariot. Of course, the primary figure in The Book of Longings is not Jesus anyway but Ana - aka “Little Thunder”. Instead, great swathes of this story are achingly dull. Since it’s Christ at hand here, you would think there might be some spellbinding characterisations included, perhaps peppered with magic realism and a variety of feverish disquisitions about the meaning of all things. She like many fellow characters in this tale comes off as a modern American sent back through time to enlighten the Flintstones at every turn. But the problem is that her protagonist Ana is incredible both as a historical figure and as a human being. In her afterword, Susan Kidd Monk explains that since almost nothing is known of Jesus’s life between the ages of 13 and 30, she felt quite justified as a novelist in creating a flesh and blood wife for him. Quite simply, this is one of the most preposterous stories ever told. Alas, with The Book of Longings, a novel about Jesus Christ’s long “silenced” missing wife Ana, Monk Kidd has fallen spectacularly back to earth. ![]()
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