A book for believers by a believer

• By GREG LANGLEY
• Books editor
• Published: Mar 9, 2008 - UPDATED: 3.09.08

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CHRIST THE LORD: THE ROAD TO CANA
By Anne Rice
Knopf, $25.95

It’s a risky proposition to write a book based on a story from the Bible. On one hand, you’re liable to draw criticism if you veer too far from the original story. You may be accused of losing sight of the spiritual component of the story, of exploiting it for your own profit.

On the other hand, if you just retell what’s in the Bible, you haven’t created anything. You’ve been derivative and lacking in imagination. You may be accused of being unable to formulate a plot of your own.

Riskiest of all is a story based on the life of Christ. Anne Rice has done just that, not once but twice. She has written this book and its prequel, Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt (2006), not just about Christ but in the first person voice of Jesus himself. Talk about risky.

No one will ever accuse Rice of lacking imagination, though, and with 10 vampire series novels, two New Tales of Vampires novels, three Mayfair Witches novels and six single novels (as listed on her personal Web site, http://www.annerice.com), no one can deny that she can sustain a plot. She’s clearly a talented writer, and that talent showed in the first book — which was successful — and it shows in this book.

Rice takes up the story as Jesus is living in the village of Nazareth, helping his adoptive father, Joseph, with his carpentry work. He lives with his “brothers” and “sisters.” These are the ones named in the Gospel of Matthew, and in keeping with church tradition, Rice portrays them as children of Joseph’s earlier marriage or as first cousins who were referred to as “brothers” and “sisters” in the custom of the times.

Jesus is different, clearly. He’s a good and obedient son to Joseph and Mary, but his older brother James is frustrated because Jesus has shown no interest in marrying and starting a family.

“There are two men as old as you in this town who’ve never married. One is crippled. The other’s an idiot, and everyone knows this,” James tells Jesus.

Jesus is unmoved. He is secretly torn, attracted to the idea of marrying his beautiful kinswoman, Avigail. But he has feelings that are hard to explain to James, intimations of his own divinity that are stirring deep within. As he lies thinking beneath the night sky near a spring, Jesus has a oneness experience.

“A stillness came over me. The common ache in my arms and shoulders died away. The breeze was chilling yet soothing. Something inside me let go. It had been a long while since I’d savored such a moment, since I’d let the tight prison of my skin dissolve. I felt as if I were moving upward and outward, as if the night were filled with myriad beings and the rhythm of their song drowned out the anxious beating of my heart. The shell of my body was gone. I was in the stars. But my human soul wouldn’t let me loose.”

Rice’s Jesus is fully human yet God incarnate. He sees two young boys stoned to death for a supposed act of homosexuality (Rice’s own son is gay), and Rice uses this incident to paint a picture of the rigid and intolerant society of Israel in Jesus’ time. Later, something happens with Avigail, something that Jesus is partly responsible for yet which is wholly innocent. But her father and the community turn against the teenage girl. Jesus tries to help. Rice uses this complication to steer the plot to the wedding at Cana where Jesus began his public ministry with the first miracle — turning water to wine.

But first she recounts the great epiphany when Jesus meets John the Baptist and Jesus is baptized.

“The clouds above had shifted. The sound of beating wings filled my ears. I started forward and saw across John’s face the shadow of a dove moving upwards — and then I saw the bird itself rising into a great opening of deep blue sky, and I heard a whisper against my ears, a whisper that penetrated the sound of the wings, as though a pair of lips had touched both ears at the same time, and faint as it was, soft and secretive as it was, it seemed the edge of an immense echo.