NYT positive review for Anne Rice’s CHRIST THE LORD: OUT OF EGYPT

A Boy Tells of Angels, Bethlehem and Family - New York Times:

The family in Anne Rice’s new novel has a secret. A really, really big one. These people have had a life-altering experience that they hide from their 7-year-old. When the boy raises questions - “But who were the men from the East, Mamma?” or “But what happened in Bethlehem?” - his relatives are mum.

But the boy begins to sense the truth. He notices he has unusual abilities. He can make it snow or raise the dead. He can sense the presence of angels. He also has dreams of terrible, fiery destruction and is visited by figure who calls himself the Prince of Chaos. By the end of “Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt,” this young boy knows that he himself is the Prince of Peace.

“Christ the Lord” is written in the first person. How dare Ms. Rice appropriate the voice of young Jesus? She is best known for maudlin, histrionic vampire tales, so the innocence of a 7-year-old would not seem to come naturally. But Ms. Rice makes the transition much more easily than might be expected. And she delivers the only shock effects still available to her, after a career-length cavalcade of kinks: piety and moderation.

“Christ the Lord” shares predilections with her other books. Even in biblical times and in the Holy Land, Ms. Rice retains her obsessions with ritual and purification, with lavish detail and gaudy d�cor. But she writes this book in a simpler, leaner style, giving it the slow but inexorable rhythm of an incantation. The restraint and prayerful beauty of “Christ the Lord” is apt to surprise her usual readers and attract new ones.

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