Passion of Mary Magdalen, TheAuthor: Cunningham, ElizabethGenre: General Novels Publisher: Monkfish Book Publishing Company Released: 2006 |
A Review by Kim Lumpkin
04/16/2006
The impact of Brown's novel continues to be felt as more authors feel free to explore lesser known biblical figures, and one of the most intriguing of those by far is Mary Magdalen, whose identity and exact relationship to Jesus has been a source of almost endless speculation. In The Passion of Mary Magdalen, Elizabeth Cunningham takes a deceptively fanciful look at Mary's possible origins and weaves her into the story of Jesus in a way that is pretty much in line with the implications raised in Brown's novel, only taken much farther (and, for my money, it's a lot more entertaining as well).
In this version, Mary is actually Maeve, a proud, sassy redheaded Celt (a people who at the time were considered savages by the Romans, Jews, and pretty much everyone else). Cunningham's conceit is that Jesus met and fell in love with Maeve as a youth on his travels, not yet having come to a full awareness of his destiny. After they are separated, Maeve is driven for most of her young adult life to find him, despite being sold into slavery to a Roman madam and then to a fickle and demanding young society woman who is no match for Maeve's superior wits. When Maeve discovers the goddess Isis, she believes she has finally found her calling. By having Maeve tell her story from beyond, Cunningham allows her to comment occasionally on the modern perceptions of not only her but Jesus and the Apostles as well. It's a device that could easily become tiresome if overused, but here it is just enough to add refreshing moments of insight, as when she muses about her inability to give up her quest for Jesus despite the apparent hopelessness of her situation:
Time wears away hope, like water wears away rock. As for faith, I remained in a standoff with Isis. But love, as Paul of Tarsus was to say, is greater than hope and faith; it can survive without either. Love was all I had. And it would not go away; it would not die, even though sometimes I wished it would.
She also gives her opinion on everyting, including the parables recounted by Matthew, Mark, in her typically straightforward fashion that is sure to either rankle or amuse:
I mention these storytellers now, because I have a bone to pick with them over the parables. The three who include them insist that Jesus spoke in parables to the crowd to fulfill some nasty bit of scripture (a device all of them overuse). Jesus allegedly says to his disciples, ‘To you is granted the secret of the kingdom of God, but to those who are outside everything comes in parables so that ‘they may look, but never perceive; listen and listen, but never understand; to avoid changing their ways and being healed.' Bloody Isaiah 6-9-10. Then, in all their accounts, Jesus goes on to ruin the parable of sower by explaining it in painstaking detail. Why? Because they are the chosen ones? The inner circle? The initiates? Hell no! Because they were too dumb to get it otherwise.
For all her irreverence, Cunningham does draw the line, particularly in her portrayal of Jesus; Maeve may be a whore, but Jesus is faithful to her and, with the exception of his relationship with Maeve, never behaves in an un-Christlike manner. But this is Maeve's show, and while the ending is never in doubt (this is the most famous story in the world, after all), discovering the clever ways Cunningham fits the bawdy, moody, but also intelligent and goodhearted Celt into each of the major events in Jesus' earthly life as they unfold becomes engaging enough. This book is not for the easily offended, but for open minded souls it can be a fun way to look at the story of Jesus through fresh, and refreshingly feminine, eyes.
© Copyright ToxicUniverse.com 04/16/2006
