Book-It '10! Book #83
The Fifty Books Challenge, year two! This was a library request.
Title: The Passion of Mary Magdalen: A Novel by Elizabeth Cunningham
Details: Copyright 2006, Monkfish Book Publishing
Synopsis (By Way of Front & Back Flaps): " The most provocative woman in the Gospels, Mary Magdalen makes only a few, dramatic appearances. You always knew there had to be more…
Make way for Maeve, the feisty, outspoken Celtic Magdalen, telling her own story, on her own terms. No one’s disciple, she is lover, bard, priestess, healer. And like her beloved Jesus, Maeve incarnates the divine mystery of love-in the flesh.
Flesh we first encounter stripped naked and displayed on a slave block in Rome. Born to warrior witches on an island in the Celtic Otherworld, raised to be a hero, Maeve is determined to find her lost beloved, a young man known to the Celts as Esus, whose life she once saved at enormous cost to herself. She has survived a shipwreck, trekked through the mountains of Celtic Iberia. Only an imperial power could slow this woman down.
Snapped up by an aristocratic madam, Maeve becomes not only an accomplished whore but also has a close encounter with the goddess Isis, whose story of loss and longing affects Maeve deeply. A failed attempt at escape results in even more bitter slavery when Maeve is sold to a spoiled young matron with a terrible secret. Here in the house of her enemy, Maeve learns the healing mysteries that become the basis of her life-and his. When Maeve lands in mortal trouble, priestesses, whores, matrons, and even Rome’s chief Vestal Virgin must unite to bring about a her rescue.
Free at last, Maeve goes straight to Palestine where she meets Mary of Bethany, a prickly would-be rabbinical scholar, and Ma (yes, his mother), a fey but autocratic matriarch. Neither one knows where Jesus is; he has vanished again. What is a girl to do but settle down in the good-time town of Magdala and open her own holy whore house, welcome each stranger as if he were a god-until, at last, he is.
Equally strong-willed and charismatic, Maeve and Jesus form a union that is as stormy as it is ecstatic. Throughout the terrain of the Gospels-healings, exorcisms, miracles, feasting, riots, and terrifying prophecy-the lovers fight and make love, nurture and confront each other, infusing this unique passion narrative with passion in all its meanings.
In this central novel of The Maeve Chronicles, acclaimed novelist Cunningham brings us a Mary Magdalen who defies all stereotypes- old and new. Passionate and unrepentant, feisty and tender, Maeve leaps off the page, a luminous, embodied archetype for our time."
Why I Wanted to Read It: This came up on a search for "Pagan+fiction". I'd remembered mostly enjoying one of Cunningham's other books, The Return of the Goddess: a Divine Comedy, so I figured I'd give this one a shot. Also the blurb "Cunningham is like an American J.K. Rowling... creating a feminist Harry Potter fantasy on a religious theme" was intriguing. And of course, I've always been interested in the figure of Mary Magdalen, whose legacy always seemed to have suffered at the hands of the patriarchy.
How I Liked It: The story is told as though Magdalen (actually Celt named Maeve) is narrating it to us in the present. There are plenty of asides such as "What, in your day, they'd call..." and she reflects (largely bitterly) when retelling stories from the Bible that the writers "got wrong".
This literary tactic (the live Magdalen relaying her story) can grate at times, particularly since the author insists on having characters and especially Maeve herself repeat modern phrases, something the author occasionally tempers with "the first century equivalent of [insert word/behavior]" which actually seems to only make the dialog more stilted.
Occasionally, the first person storytelling can grate as well. Maeve explains away flaws in the storytelling (not mentioning characters again) rather than let them pass, something that seems as though it's a tactic to make the story sound more oral and straight from the hip, but comes off as clumsy.
Despite its flaws, the book still stands as a tribute, however uneven, to a character poisoned by the patriarchy. While I'm hesitant to label any work of fiction as "feminist" (which usually just means "centered on a woman or women"), this is perhaps the closest the Biblical stories will get. Although I'm guessing that the sex scenes between Maeve and Jesus, the concept of him marrying her, as well as the idea of the Bible being flawed will no doubt turn off Biblical scholars or most curious Christians, the story humanizes Jesus in an important way.
He is still portrayed as the son of God and a miracle worker (although Maeve works as many as he does, to far lesser acclaim/notice), but his muddling in his very human form to comprehend the great responsibility set before him is something that feels as though it needs to be essentially taught, but seldom is. His miracles and work were all the greater since he performed them as a human; persecuted, often confused, and subject to any of the normal pratfalls of the human race.
An important book for Christians and a sprawling, lush tale for everyone else.
Notable: Given the author's other book and now this one, it's hard to shake off the feeling that the author (a Christian, specifically an Episcopalian) is making an appeal to Pagans by attempting to offer what many have left Christianity for: the female face of Deity.
Pagan rites and Gods in this particular book are portrayed with an air of farce and artifice, albeit the very real beauty in Maeve's Goddess. The comparisons Maeve draws between the story of Osiris and Isis and herself and Jesus don't so much feel as though the author is portraying the reborn savior sacrifice myth as starting long before Jesus so much as the fact Jesus is the "actualization" of the myth.
For a book that can in some ways rightfully pride itself on the very Pagan origins of Christianity, one can't help but feel the author has done it a disservice and soft-balled some low-key proselytizing (you can worship the real God AND whatever female you want!) in the mix.
Title: The Passion of Mary Magdalen: A Novel by Elizabeth Cunningham
Details: Copyright 2006, Monkfish Book Publishing
Synopsis (By Way of Front & Back Flaps): " The most provocative woman in the Gospels, Mary Magdalen makes only a few, dramatic appearances. You always knew there had to be more…
Make way for Maeve, the feisty, outspoken Celtic Magdalen, telling her own story, on her own terms. No one’s disciple, she is lover, bard, priestess, healer. And like her beloved Jesus, Maeve incarnates the divine mystery of love-in the flesh.
Flesh we first encounter stripped naked and displayed on a slave block in Rome. Born to warrior witches on an island in the Celtic Otherworld, raised to be a hero, Maeve is determined to find her lost beloved, a young man known to the Celts as Esus, whose life she once saved at enormous cost to herself. She has survived a shipwreck, trekked through the mountains of Celtic Iberia. Only an imperial power could slow this woman down.
Snapped up by an aristocratic madam, Maeve becomes not only an accomplished whore but also has a close encounter with the goddess Isis, whose story of loss and longing affects Maeve deeply. A failed attempt at escape results in even more bitter slavery when Maeve is sold to a spoiled young matron with a terrible secret. Here in the house of her enemy, Maeve learns the healing mysteries that become the basis of her life-and his. When Maeve lands in mortal trouble, priestesses, whores, matrons, and even Rome’s chief Vestal Virgin must unite to bring about a her rescue.
Free at last, Maeve goes straight to Palestine where she meets Mary of Bethany, a prickly would-be rabbinical scholar, and Ma (yes, his mother), a fey but autocratic matriarch. Neither one knows where Jesus is; he has vanished again. What is a girl to do but settle down in the good-time town of Magdala and open her own holy whore house, welcome each stranger as if he were a god-until, at last, he is.
Equally strong-willed and charismatic, Maeve and Jesus form a union that is as stormy as it is ecstatic. Throughout the terrain of the Gospels-healings, exorcisms, miracles, feasting, riots, and terrifying prophecy-the lovers fight and make love, nurture and confront each other, infusing this unique passion narrative with passion in all its meanings.
In this central novel of The Maeve Chronicles, acclaimed novelist Cunningham brings us a Mary Magdalen who defies all stereotypes- old and new. Passionate and unrepentant, feisty and tender, Maeve leaps off the page, a luminous, embodied archetype for our time."
Why I Wanted to Read It: This came up on a search for "Pagan+fiction". I'd remembered mostly enjoying one of Cunningham's other books, The Return of the Goddess: a Divine Comedy, so I figured I'd give this one a shot. Also the blurb "Cunningham is like an American J.K. Rowling... creating a feminist Harry Potter fantasy on a religious theme" was intriguing. And of course, I've always been interested in the figure of Mary Magdalen, whose legacy always seemed to have suffered at the hands of the patriarchy.
How I Liked It: The story is told as though Magdalen (actually Celt named Maeve) is narrating it to us in the present. There are plenty of asides such as "What, in your day, they'd call..." and she reflects (largely bitterly) when retelling stories from the Bible that the writers "got wrong".
This literary tactic (the live Magdalen relaying her story) can grate at times, particularly since the author insists on having characters and especially Maeve herself repeat modern phrases, something the author occasionally tempers with "the first century equivalent of [insert word/behavior]" which actually seems to only make the dialog more stilted.
Occasionally, the first person storytelling can grate as well. Maeve explains away flaws in the storytelling (not mentioning characters again) rather than let them pass, something that seems as though it's a tactic to make the story sound more oral and straight from the hip, but comes off as clumsy.
Despite its flaws, the book still stands as a tribute, however uneven, to a character poisoned by the patriarchy. While I'm hesitant to label any work of fiction as "feminist" (which usually just means "centered on a woman or women"), this is perhaps the closest the Biblical stories will get. Although I'm guessing that the sex scenes between Maeve and Jesus, the concept of him marrying her, as well as the idea of the Bible being flawed will no doubt turn off Biblical scholars or most curious Christians, the story humanizes Jesus in an important way.
He is still portrayed as the son of God and a miracle worker (although Maeve works as many as he does, to far lesser acclaim/notice), but his muddling in his very human form to comprehend the great responsibility set before him is something that feels as though it needs to be essentially taught, but seldom is. His miracles and work were all the greater since he performed them as a human; persecuted, often confused, and subject to any of the normal pratfalls of the human race.
An important book for Christians and a sprawling, lush tale for everyone else.
Notable: Given the author's other book and now this one, it's hard to shake off the feeling that the author (a Christian, specifically an Episcopalian) is making an appeal to Pagans by attempting to offer what many have left Christianity for: the female face of Deity.
Pagan rites and Gods in this particular book are portrayed with an air of farce and artifice, albeit the very real beauty in Maeve's Goddess. The comparisons Maeve draws between the story of Osiris and Isis and herself and Jesus don't so much feel as though the author is portraying the reborn savior sacrifice myth as starting long before Jesus so much as the fact Jesus is the "actualization" of the myth.
For a book that can in some ways rightfully pride itself on the very Pagan origins of Christianity, one can't help but feel the author has done it a disservice and soft-balled some low-key proselytizing (you can worship the real God AND whatever female you want!) in the mix.