Reading Jesus

August 10, 2009
Novelist and memoirist Gordon (Circling My Mother
) examines her faith by closely reading, in a kind of literary lectio divina
(sacred reading), the four Christian gospels that recount the life of Christ. The accounts by evangelists Matthew, Mark, Luke and John of the life of Jesus have a common subject and amazingly different treatments. Gordon tackles the power and puzzle of the Christian gospels with measure and imagination, providing welcome relief for those left cold by scholarly or fundamentalist parsing. Raised Catholic, she writes as a layperson and cradle believer thrilled and troubled by these history-shaping texts, unafraid to articulate questions: what does it mean to be perfect? what exactly is a miracle? Her savoring of particular lines is poetic and amplifies the beauty and sometimes ambiguous challenge of the language, stories and injunctions of the gospels. Gordon writes to find out what she thinks and lets readers listen in. Those whose faith is infused with humanism and love of the power of words will love Gordon's words about matters and mysteries of faith.

October 1, 2009
Gordon, O. Henry Award winner and best-selling author of novels (e.g., "Pearl") and memoirs (e.g., "Circling My Mother"), has taken on what she deems an impossible projectfinding the "real" Jesus as a character of the Gospels read as narratives. Gordon, a skilled writer and thinker, wants to add her voice to the many already spoken, in a tone that neither shouts nor threatens. She is not interested in converting anyone with this book. Gordon, dually influenced by her relationship with Catholicism and the feminist movement, writes well, with passion and candor, exploring those Gospel stories that are part of the fabric of many religious people's psyches. She finds fault with those who read, rewrite, and retell the Gospel words to suit their own agendas. Gordon is a believing skeptic writing of her journeynot a Jefferson trying to clean up the Gospels but a writer mining the rich depths of these sacred texts. VERDICT Valuable to the thoughtful scholarly reader, Christian and non-Christian. [See Prepub Alert, "LJ" 6/15/09.]Nancy Richey, Western Kentucky Univ. Lib., Bowling Green

Copyright 2009 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

October 1, 2009
Although many Christians are familiar with the idea and the practice of members of the clergy reading and interpreting snippets of the Gospels every Sunday, not many laypersons can boast that they themselves have actually read the Gospels in their entirety. When novelist Mary Gordon realized that she has never read the complete narrative of the life of Jesus as written by Matthew, Mark, Luke, and John, she suffered her own unique version of a crisis of faitha crisis of a literary, rather than a spiritual, nature. How could she possibly claim to understand the Jesus portrayed in the Gospels if she has not approached these four treatments and versions with her seasoned writers and readers eye? Reading the Gospels like a book, with Jesus as the central character, she personalized the experience, adding her own voice and her own interpretations to one of the most well-known, yet nevertheless elusive, stories in history.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2009, American Library Association.)