Toward the end of the book, his wife’s devotion to him seems to make less sense to me, as though Kidd was unconsciously relying on us to just think of Jesus as always wonderful instead of showing us what of him was so lodged in his wife’s heart even when they were separated.īut the story isn’t actually about Jesus. However, Kidd still writes him as a little too much of a good guy like in other Jesus fiction: he looms charismatically for his wife in parts of the story where it would seem more real for there to be a rift, like when he leaves her to follow John the Immerser. We see scenes where he gets angry, where he questions, where he works long hard days. Though she doesn’t depict sex scenes, Jesus makes love to his wife. Kidd’s Jesus is sensual, thoughtful, frustrated, empathetic. Kidd does better than most in writing Jesus, perhaps because of her desire to focus on Jesus’ humanity. I even thought Christopher Moore’s Jesus in Lamb is a little bland, and Moore did not care about offending Christians! A serene, ethereal bore with a great smile. Jesus in my work and others I’ve read is always too nice. As a pastor and creative writer, I have tried to weave together my work subject matter and my love for fiction and it never works. Though I’m not a big murder mystery reader, my friend’s desire for something fast paced and exciting was exactly why I was not interested in the book. I was not interested, but between the extra reading I was doing to survive the pandemic and my desire to always be on the lookout for church-related summer reading book club books, I picked it up. I heard about it on NPR and listened to other clergy talk about it excitedly. The Book of Longings is Kidd’s long-awaited new novel. Reading Sue Monk Kidd’s new novel alongside non-canonical scripture
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