Anne Rice's CHRIST THE LORD

I was interviewed in USA Today this week about Anne Rice's series Christ the Lord, which is a novelization of the life of Christ.  I found the first book (about Jesus' childhood) rather stilted, but this second one definitely hits its stride.  The book is called The Road to Cana and just released on Tuesday.

The novel traces Jesus' adult life just before his public ministry, so he's around 30.  Since the Bible says nothing about this period, Rice is free to invent and speculate, putting her imagination to work alongside the prodigious research she conducted for this series.  The result is a captivating novel that manages to portray Jesus as both human and divine; he has a believable love interest he is trying to deny, family troubles, and more than the usual round of difficulties with the government. He also has a transcendent quality that is obvious to all who know him, even those who are deeply suspicious of it.  As I read it, I was impressed by Rice's ability to make Jesus into a plausible character; that's awfully hard to do with someone who is supposed to be sinless.  How can a novelist make a sinless character a fully human, fleshed-out person?  Yet Rice manages this feat. The novel is also peopled with other loving, flawed characters. It's worth checking out.