- Paperback: 464 pages
- Publisher: Anchor Canada; 1st Printing edition (Feb 25 2003)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 0385658559
- ISBN-13: 978-0385658553
- Product Dimensions: 20.1 x 12.7 x 3.3 cm
- Shipping Weight: 249 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (5 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #236,747 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
From Amazon
Testament, a sprawling and ambitious historical novel about Jesus, reveals a Nino Ricci who has abandoned the formulas and characters that made his early novels--the trilogy of Lives of the Saints, In a Glass House, and Where She Has Gone--so very successful. The lushness, the intimacy, the family sagas, the lovingly skeptical immersion in Italian and Italian-Canadian culture--all of these elements are gone, abandoned in favour of a spare style and a flat, unemotional reimagination of Christ and his circle.
Ricci takes up the now-conventional approach of writing about Christ as an extraordinary ordinary man. Rather than rewriting the gospels, he offers a few interesting theories about their mundane genesis, expounding them through the voices of four of the New Testament's silenced witnesses: Judas, Mary Magdalene, the Virgin Mary (though Ricci's Mary is no virgin), and Simon of Gergesa. Judas becomes Yihuda of Qiryat, a dour and paranoid agent for the Jewish resistance, and Christ himself is drawn as the bastard son of a Roman dignitary, begotten in a rape that was brokered by Mary's upwardly mobile father. While some of Ricci's amendments will likely offend dogmatic Christians, there is nothing here more controversial than Testament's precursors--books like Nikos Kazantzakis's The Last Temptation of Christ or Jim Crace's Quarantine.
Sadly, Testament's moments of brilliance are few. Seeing a prepubescent Jesus in Alexandria, apprenticed to a freewheeling Diogenes-like Greek philosopher, is delicious, and Simon of Gergesa's travels with a sprightly con man are hugely entertaining, but Testament does little to make its readers fall in love with its characters or the world they inhabit. --Jack Illingworth --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
From Publishers Weekly
Gently stripping the life of Jesus bare of its mythical trappings, Ricci (The Book of Saints, etc.) presents a lyrical, searching version of the biblical tale, grounding his work in the historical realities of the time and telling Jesus' story from four different perspectives. Two of the novel's narrators, Judas and Jesus' mother, Mary, eschew supernatural explanations of Jesus' ministry and describe him as an eccentric, depressive genius. The other two narrators, Mary Magdalene and a shepherd named Simon of Gergesa, witness moments in Jesus' ministry that they believe to be otherworldly. Set against each other, these four accounts reveal the ways in which ordinary acts come to seem miraculous, through repetition and suggestion. The biblical interpretation of key events is re-examined, too. In Ricci's novel, the pretext for Jesus' arrest and eventual crucifixion is not his betrayal by Judas, but his association with him, since Judas is part of an insurrectionist group. And when Jesus' body disappears from the tomb, Simon of Gergesa assumes this has to do with the practice of paying Roman guards to look the other way while family members claim crucified bodies. At a deeper level, Ricci seeks to present Jesus as a man whose powers spring simply from great compassion and the ability to see beyond appearances. Ricci's lucid, thoughtful storytelling and his ability to shed fresh light on an oft-told tale makes this a valuable entry in the annals of fiction inspired by the Gospels, from Renan's Life of Jesus to Jim Crace's Quarantine.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
Copyright 2003 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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Customer Reviews
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
So good I didn't want it to end,
By A Customer
This review is from: Testament: A Novel (Hardcover)
I was fascinated by the book. Each of the four characters was such an individual with a different relationship to Jesus. Jesus was seen as messianic, petulant, noncommunicative, loving, distant....all these things. The core of his true teachings came through too, such as the idea that heaven is right here in front of us but we do not open our eyes to see it. I am not a Christian and I agree with other reviewers here that some Christians may find this a difficult read, but if they are open-minded, they should find it a valuable addition to the stories of Jesus. Most of all, to me, I was so sorry when it ended. 450 pages, and then I said, "is that all?" I wanted even more! I did not, as one reviewer did, find the writing simplistic, I found it echoed the voices of the people of the time...there was almost a sense of it being translated from their own language - Aramaic or Greek. The historical aspect was excellent as well. Overall a very interesting novel.
3.0 out of 5 stars
Ok, but could have been much better,
By A Customer
This review is from: Testament: A Novel (Hardcover)
I was looking forward to this book. I love twists of common stories, and novels such as Saramago's Gospel According to Jesus Christ and Crace's Quarrantine not only gave me much to ponder, but were so well written that they were a joy to read. Not this one. Based on his knowledge of history and of the human psyche, Ricco was able to interpret events from the bible in ways that are very plausible. My problem was the writing. At first it didn't seem to bother me; I found myself turning pages as fast as my eyes could scan them. But by the third chapter I was tiring of the simplistic language, and the constant repetition of obvious fact as if the reader didn't get it the first time. Also each chapter is written in the first person. The ideal would be for each of these narrators to tell the story in his own voice, and tell it so that we become enthralled in the world he weaves. Instead, they story telling was about as exciting as reading a court document. I did like how each chapter connected and how each person saw the same event or the same person slightly differently, leading to their differing perspective. But again, the writing kept getting in the way of making it a truly enjoyable novel. I'd recommend the book if only for the interesting take on the story. But don't expect much from how it is written.
5.0 out of 5 stars
Great book, but probably not for everyone,
By A Customer
This review is from: Testament: A Novel (Hardcover)
I ejoyed this book thoroughly - very compelling, well-written and engaging. I suspect, however, that many devout Christians will have trouble reading a work of fiction based on the life of Jesus Christ, with the emphasis on the human rather than the divine. Having said that, telling the story from four points of view, including some overlap in recounted events, presents a fascinating reflection on how our perceptions are influenced by what we bring to the situation (very interesting and relevant for the telling of THIS story). It also works well for maintaining momentum in the telling of a story that we already know very well. For anyone who feels that they can enjoy such a book without feeling uset or offended on religious grounds, I recommend it highly.
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