John

November 12, 2007
With plenty of imagination and occasionally grandiloquent prose, Williams (Four Letters of Love
) pens the last days of the Apostle John, the beloved disciple of Jesus who, tradition says, wrote the wild, apocalyptic book of Revelation as well as the Gospel and Epistles of John. The story begins as John, blind and nearly 100 years old, lives banished on the Island of Patmos where he once received his portentous vision. Surrounded by doubting disciples of his own who pepper him with questions about Christ’s return and speak heresy, John remembers his time with Jesus. Williams’s present tense narration lends urgency as he interweaves dark and sometimes grotesquely violent threads throughout his story. He beautifully portrays the Christ-followers’ loneliness as they yearn for the return of their Messiah and despair at the reception of the Christian message. Some of Williams’s prose is fresh and elegant (“a bright wind hammers silver out of the sea”); at other times it is confusing (“the trader unsnaps dogs of curses”). The second half of the book loses momentum, but offers interesting conjectures about the explosion of dissenting beliefs after Jesus’ death and how people of the time might have responded. This novel will appeal to readers who like imaginative and gritty sagas of the lives of key Christians in the early church as well as those who value lyricism.

December 15, 2007
Williams fictionalizes the final years of an elderly John the Apostle. Exiled to the island of Patmos with a small group of disciples, John is revitalized by a new challenge to the Christian faith. When Matthias, an unscrupulously ambitious disciple, promotes himself as the new Messiah, the tenuous foundations of an already floundering Christianity are threatened. Returning to Ephesus after the Roman banishment of Christians is lifted, John is galvanized into action when he witnesses the startling erosion of conviction that has occurred among the formerly faithful. As John grows physically weaker, he dictates his gospels with a strengthened sense of purpose and spirituality. Readership is guaranteed where biblical sagas like The Red Tent (1997) and Pilates Wife (2006) enjoyed popular success.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2007, American Library Association.)