Poisoned Honey

Starred review from February 22, 2010
As she did in Salome
(2007), Gormley crafts a gripping reimagining of a biblical figure, this time Jesus' disciple, Mary Magdalene. The author brings to life the culture of first-century Palestine, skillfully exploring the impact of family obligations, gender roles, business practices, and Jewish/Gentile religious customs on a young woman's decisions. After the prophet Miryam tells 13-year old Mari in a vision, “you are consecrated to a higher purpose,” Mari convinces herself she can obey her spiritual calling by submitting to an arranged marriage. But when fever takes the lives of her father and her fiancé, Mari becomes dependent on less benevolent men and is faced with bitter choices. Gormley's portrayal of Mari's gradual possession by evil spirits proves both convincing and terrifying, as demons force her to alienate herself from family and friends, setting the stage for a climactic miracle of deliverance. Gormley creates a memorable portrait of this famous but often misunderstood character, along with compelling characterizations of Matthew the tax collector and Jesus, making this book an important contribution to the genre of biblically based fiction. Ages 12–up.

February 1, 2010
Gr 9 Up-Rejecting the traditional conflation of Mary Magdalene with unnamed sinful women in the Gospels, Gormley evokes an anguished teenager healed by controversial Rabbi Yeshua. Mariamne tells her own story: a happy childhood with her doting merchant father, a thrilling first love, the melodramatically simultaneous loss of her father and fiancé. To recoup her family's finances, Mari unhappily weds a nasty old man and, relentlessly undermined by a domestic rival, eventually retreats into her voice-filled imagination. Gormley makes Mari a skilled narrator, strategically planting details that will reappear later on and briefly introducing the stories of Miriam and Esther. Mari's character is a human mixture of willfulness, weakness, needs, and gifts; her spirit-possession is convincing, her cluelessness about her rival, less so. Five parallel third-person chapters follow the moral development of Matthew, a despised tax-collector's son: he has his own familial and social losses, and their threads entwine. Yeshua appears in the last third of the novel, which ends as Mari and Matthew join his followers. Fast paced and vivid, the novel will appeal most strongly to Christians, but other readers will find the portrait of a person, and a time, memorably real."Patricia D. Lothrop, St. George's School, Newport, RI"

Copyright 2010 School Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

May 15, 2010
Grades 8-12 Mariamne is the pampered daughter of a Magdala sardine merchant, and she has always experienced visionsor perhaps they are just flights of fancy. But after several tragedies, including the deaths of her father and the young man to whom shes betrothed, Maris hold on reality becomes shakier. A fortune-teller shows her how to use charms and amulets to escape the hardships of living with the elderly husband her family has found for her, and when one of the incantations seems to kill him, as she had hoped, Mari sinks deeper into dependency on the voices she hears. The story of Mary Magdalene has been told and retold, but usually not for this age group. Gormley gives readers a Mary who will seem familiar to teens, full of pride and passion, hopeful yet hesitant. She sets her heroine against a remarkably well-detailed first-century milieu that captures everyday details and also makes strong statements about the place of a woman in that society. Affecting in the way of The Red Tent (1997), this is a strong choice for mother-daughter book clubs.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)