If Sue Monk Kidd has a new book out you read it! She's that good of an author. She answers the question of "If Jesus had a wife" ...
It was answered perfectly.

I had to put this book down. I found it hard to follow the fictive and historical elements of the story and struggled to relate to Ana. This book has received high praise, and so, I was disappointed that I could not find the stamina to keep pushing. I do hope to keep reading, but for now, I've decided to give it a rest.

The Book of Longings is a wonderful story. Sue Monk Kidd drops the reader right in the middle of Galilee during Jesus' lifetime. The author deftly weaves religious customs, political tensions and familial structures to provide the background to a wonderful character. We meet Ana as a privileged teenager whose wealthy father indulges her desire for an education by providing her with a tutor and the materials to write. Recording stories she has heard and creating her own is Ana's passion. Unfortunately, for women of her time, it can also be dangerous. Women are treated as property by their families and are at the whims of their fathers and brothers to make decisions for them. Ana's life is forever changed by a chance encounter with Jesus. She dreams of him and begins to find ways to see him again. They eventually marry and Ana is placed into a different family structure with new challenges. Jesus values Ana's thoughts and opinions but even he does not always understand her need to express the thoughts and emotions within herself by writing them down. Ana struggles to balance her need to tell and record stories with the expectation for her to be an obedient wife, mother and sister. Ana has a few devoted friends and family members who help her realize her destiny by offering support and words of wisdom. Ana's story is a refreshing portrait of a woman during a time that rarely presents the female perspective.

This book had me a little skeptical, primarily because I consider myself a Christian. On the other hand, I love Sue Monk Kidd. I am open to interpretations of biblical stories so long as the ultimate context doesn’t change. I feel this is one of the only ways that the women of the bible can get their “story” heard. The Red Tent was another book in this category that didn’t disappoint. My fear for this book surrounded including Jesus and felt that it would offend rather than inspire readers.

I am so glad that I ignored my hesitations and dove into this book. It did not disappoint. The focus on Ana put me at ease as Kidd explored the life of Jesus through his wife’s eyes. I love the author’s note where Sue Monk Kidd explains that while she was extremely careful in her research, she kept most of her references historically accurate. Aside of some minor changes to make the story work, I feel she did a wonderful job. There is little documentation in the Bible on Jesus's life prior to his early 30’s. I fine it plausible that Jesus would follow the life of a devout Jewish man. I believe this book explores that possibility in the most delicate way.

This is a story of strong female character with both steadfastness and rebellion. The oppression of women and the deep bonds it created were perfectly displayed. It’s an intricate story of Ana’s life, filled with love and loss, betrayal and saving. Ana’s person longings are felt in an inspiring way.

Without hesitation, I give this book 5 stars!

Thank you to NetGalley and the publisher for a free copy of this book in exchange for my honest opinion.

THE BOOK OF LONGINGS by Sue Monk Kidd (The Invention of Wings, The Secret Life of Bees) is the latest from a novelist who excels at exploring strong women. Here, she portrays biblical times and tells the story of Ana, the wife of Jesus. It is partly a coming of age story, with Ana rebelling against constraints which her parents and society place on her. And, this is certainly a story of self-discovery and one with strong feminist undertones. An apt description of Ana comes from her aunt who says, "What most sets you apart is the spirit in you that rebels and persists. It isn't the largeness in you that matters most, it's your passion to bring it forth." Kidd gives Ana a powerful voice, including passages from The Thunder: Perfect Mind, "an actual document written by an unknown author believed to be female and dated within the novel’s time frame." Although this is a fictional work, Kidd acknowledges "the many scholars whose books, lectures, and documentaries on the historical Jesus, the people, culture, religion, politics, and history of first century Palestine and Alexandria, biblical interpretation, the Gnostic Gospels, and women and gender in religion formed the mainstay of [my] research." A LibraryReads selection compared to Diamant's The Red Tent, THE BOOK OF LONGINGS is an intriguing look that reimagines history and tradition; it received starred reviews from Library Journal and Publishers Weekly.

Link in live post:
https://libraryreads.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/LibraryReads-April-2020.pdf

I really like Sue Monk Kidd. The Invention of Wings was a singularly enjoyable read for me, probing deeply into and expanding on the lives of Quaker and slave characters alike, culminating in a sense of true freedom and empowerment.

This book falls far, far short of those standards, and I think I may be in the minority here, but I'll write the review anyway.

Let me explain. I don't mind the premise of the book. I'm a "bad Catholic" woman, one who questions and seeks, who regularly worships alongside Buddhists and Quakers. I'm complicated, like most people. Like Ana. So I found the concept of Jesus having had a wife intriguing and worth literarily exploring.

I *should* have found a lot in common with Ana, the main character. We are both women, both members of intense religious communities, both seekers and writers. On surface, we do hold that laundry list in common.

But I found Ana so lacking in depth that I was frustrated for almost the entire novel. She is vain, ignorant, demanding on others' work and charity, lazy, impetuous. The other characters in the book merely exist to serve her and her all-important "voice". But her voice isn't proven by Kidd. I don't buy that Ana was some gifted sage. I don't buy that she possessed talent and wisdom enough to have caused the trouble and pain she brought on others, much less to have later become leader of the Theraputae.

Kidd does attribute the real-life poem, written by an unknown woman mystic, to Ana. Search online for the entire primary source titled: The Thunder, Perfect Mind, because it is well worth a read! However, I'm assuming due to space issues (?) Kidd only includes a small portion of the poem, and to my mind, not even the best parts!

There is a gap between the immature Ana and the unproven ability to even write such a poem as The Thunder.

Which leads me to her marriage to Jesus, which also didn't quite square with me. In this book, Jesus is fully man and not yet God-man. He is peaceable, kind, compassionate, and everything you'd wish him to be.... yet his having a wife like ANA makes no sense to me! I can't make sense of their passion at all, because he's portrayed as having this zen-like prayer life ("God was the ground beneath him, the sky over him, the air he breathed, the water he drank") and yet is also a sexy Fabio to Ana, and somehow okay with the wildly countercultural contraceptives she uses (let me remind you: I don't object to the contraceptives, just how they fit into the ancient narrative!). For Jesus to have taken a wife would have been because he wished to fulfill his duties as a Jewish son and man. To do that, he'd have wanted the natural ends of such a union: children. Maybe he fell in love, sure! But to me, as mentioned above, Ana's character seems lacking, so I don't fully feel what Jesus really saw or loved in Ana. He says "I bless the largeness in you, Ana", which is fine-- maybe here, Kidd wants us to know that Jesus sees Ana's writing talents and respects them. I just can't buy it, though, mainly because we aren't given enough of a taste of her writing, and the rest of her character defects detract from them.

(Her constantly begging help from Lavi, Yaltha, the people of Theraputae, and literally anyone else she comes across. The entire book is really her just asking others to support her and HER mission. Later, she skates off back to Jesus just as he's on his way to Golgotha, again making the grief all about HER. It's just so sad that she wasn't able to give Jesus a PORTRAIT OF HERSELF for him to remember as he went about his ministry and tragic death. *big eyeballs*)

I feel I'm somewhat losing myself here and maybe not writing as clearly as I could, but basically my entire problem with this book boils down to Ana.

Kidd wanted to give voice to who would certainly have been made voiceless by history: Jesus' wife, and I think she did that, but the voice she gave was whiny, immature, and selfish. I think this might have been remedied by different narration; instead of first-person narration, with all of Ana's not-particularly-deep and utterly self-involved streams of consciousness, it may have helped to have shifted it to third person narration, giving broader attention to other characters equally deserving of attention. (Yaltha! I loved her! Lavi! Lavi's wife! Jesus! Any of the Marys! Tabitha!)

This wasn't what Kidd wanted, I know. She wanted us in Ana's mind. But as a reader, I wanted nothing more than to escape it.

I will still recommend this book as an interesting exploration of a topic not-often touched on, as well as the related exploration of the concept of Sophia (wisdom), one that captivated me and had me running off to explore that tradition within Hellenistic + Greek + early Christian believers. Worth a read! Just not Kidd's best work, and I'm left really wishing for a well-done fleshing out of Jesus' wife as she truly might have been.

Thank you to NetGalley for providing an e-copy of this book in exchange for my honest review. All opinion are my own.

The premise is scandalous to some. The wife of Jesus! I heard different responses to this from Christians. Some loved the fictional look into the life of Jesus and the creativity of the tale. Others found it blasphemous, or at least disturbing. As an atheist, I had no dog in the race. So it was...OK. I think without the dog in the race I just wasn't that interested in the story. It was OK.

I was hesitant about this book because of its premise that Jesus had a wife. I would recommend reading the afterword before the book as some background about where the author got the idea. I really enjoyed the writing and all of the historical details about the time period, and I thought that the subject matter was very well done. I would recommend this book. I received a free copy of this ebook from netgalley and the publisher in exchange for my honest review.

I found this fascinating. I don't always like that sub-genre where they take famous men and show the perspective of the wife, but this was well done. Monk Kidd always does extensive research into an era she writes about. I don't know a lot about the old and new testaments, so it would be interesting to see the perspective of someone well versed in those texts.

Just like Diamant’s The Red Tent, this book helped me see women of the Old Testament as real people not backdrops. What makes this even more interesting is Judas Iscariot is her brother. Yes, I imagine there will be a hubbub about giving Jesus a wife, but it does not denigrate anything about Christ. It gives a voice to women at a time when they had no rights. Yes, it might be called revisionist history, but it is historical fiction and after all Jesus was known to champion women. I would love to see this as a discussion starter in an adult church school class. How would western culture be different if both men and women appreciated the others spirit and intellect?

Anytime you write a fictionalized account of Jesus' life in the unknown years, you've risked alienating a whole group of readers. When you decide to give him a wife, you are, as they publisher's summary says audacious. When you take it even a step further and suggest that Jesus did not grow up believing he was the son of God, you've ventured into territory that could really upset some people. I mean, it's not The Last Temptation of Christ but it could certainly be considered controversial.

I spent a lot of time at the Presbyterian church up the street from us when I was younger; I grew up with the story of Jesus. What we're taught about him is, in my mind, mostly incontrovertible. So, even though I'm more what I would call spiritual rather than religious these days, I confess to having had problems with the liberties Monk Kidd took in the story of Jesus. I'm not opposed to filling in those missing years; I'm not even opposed to making him a little more questioning or giving him a wife. I think what I struggled with was the idea that, while Jesus was faithful (although struggling with that), his movement was more akin to the teaching of Martin Luther King than God, the idea that change in the government could be made through peaceful means.

It wasn't the only thing I struggled with in this book. Do you ever watch action movies, where everything bad that could happen, does happen? This book felt like that to me. Ana's mother doesn't like her, her father sells her off in marriage then tries to barter her off as a concubine. She has only one friend who is brutalized and banished, most of her in-laws don't much care for her, and her uncle confines her to the house for a year and a half. All of that and we already know how things are going to end for her brother and her husband.

I always want to love passionate, intelligent women in books. I wanted to love a character who fought back, who told the stories of women and stood up to men. Early on, It's not that I didn't like Ana. She was a strong young woman who stood up for what she believed, admitted her faults, and wore her passion on her sleeve. But it so often felt like her story got lost in all of the dramatic events and Jesus' story.

I loved The Secret Life of Bees and The Invention of Wings. I felt certain that Monk Kidd could take this idea and create something that would impress me. I wish it had. I do recommend, if you read it, reading her notes at the back about why she wrote it and her research. It truly is a well-researched book.

I love Jesus. Like a lot.

And I truthfully downloaded this book before really knowing what it was about because I like Sue Monk Kidd. And when I discovered that the protagonist is the wife of Jesus, I didn’t know if I should run away or dive in. Three years ago, I probably would have run. But now, I dove. And I’m glad I did.

I recognized the Jesus I hold so dear in these pages. His story wasn’t compromised. In fact, I feel it broadened my understanding of Him to see Him as human. The beauty of that sentiment has left me floored.

I liked Ana. I connected with her. And I know this book will stay with me long after I’ve put it down. Sue Monk Kidd does an amazing job of being equal parts descriptive and fast paced. I did feel that it lulled a bit toward the end. But picked back up eventually. Overall, I recommend.

Shockingly, I’d never read this author before, but now I will be a diehard fan for life. What an incredible read with unique vision.

Will be posted on 5/26/2020

Ana isn't like other girls in Galilee. She was raised by a wealthy family, but she doesn't want the life that is expected of her. She not only knows how to read and write, but she is also a curious person by nature and challenges authority. This, obviously, is a problem for the time period as well as not the norm. When she finds out her parents have arranged a marriage for her to a man who is horrid, she knows she must not let this happen. Then she meets Jesus in a market and she can't stop thinking about him. Thankfully, he helps her escape her dreadful fate. Once they marry, she leaves her life and family behind to live with Jesus, his brothers, and his mother in Nazareth. So much happens while at Nazareth. Jesus realizes his calling, then there's the resistance against the Romans, the troubles of Ana's brother Judas, and her Ana's aunt's personal quest. There's dangers, betrayal, love, spirituality and so much more, but what makes The Book of Longings so very special is the feminine take on Christianity and the question that has lurked in many minds: what if Jesus had a wife? The Book of Longings by Sue Monk Kidd is a phenomenally smart and thought provoking historical read that will make a lasting impression.

Ana is the type of character I love in The Book of Longings. She is smart, determined, rebellious, and challenges authority. She wants more for her life and has a strong desire to share her story through writing. This obviously leads her to some unfortunate situations. I also love that she is determined to read and write despite the limitations on women during the time period. Her goal of recording women's stories is another aspect of the novel that I loved and I enjoyed how Kidd weaved that piece throughout Ana's story. Her journey throughout the novel is so fantastic; by the end of the story, I felt like I was saying goodbye to a longtime friend.

I must say I was worried about how Kidd would portray Jesus in The Book of Longings as well as some other famous people from the Bible. I mean can you blame me? This is quite the task. However, Kidd handled it so well. She humanized Jesus, Mary, and his disciples. She brought to life the stories from the Bible and brought a perspective to it that I really appreciated. Instead of making Jesus some sort of superhero, he was portrayed as a person who had family, friends, a wife, a job, etc. I think she handled it brilliantly. Even though we know how things end for Jesus, it was still interesting to relive it all through Ana's eyes.

I appreciated the feminist aspect to The Book of Longings the most. It made me wonder.... what if? I have always questioned whether Jesus had a wife or not despite her being excluded from the Bible. What would his wife be like? The Book of Longings explore this topic and those that have longed for a feminist take on the Bible will throughly enjoy Kidd's portrayal. But take Jesus's wife out of the equation, readers can also appreciate a woman's story that highlights the many struggles during the time period and her determination for her, as well as others around her, to not be silenced. It brought up so many questions and it was a very thought provoking read. This novel would make for an excellent book club choice as there's so much to discuss.

If you are looking for a smart beach read this summer and one that will transport you to a different time and place as well as inspire you, look no further. The Book of Longings is one of my favorite historical reads of the year.

Wow. What an incredible concept from an incredible author. Hands down I would read anything Sue Monk Kidd writes, and after this book, that has been solidified. I don't want to say it's audacious but I can't think of a better word to describe this book in the best way possible. To write a story centered around the wife of Jesus of Nazareth is one that took guts, and was executed beautifully. I loved Ana, I cheered for her, I cried with her, I felt for her. I found myself trying to steal away more and more time to read this, and when I wasn't reading it I was constantly thinking about it. This has to be hands down the best book I've read this year, and I'm sure I'll be hard pressed to find a book I love more.

Thank you to Penguin Group Viking and NetGalley for this ebook to read and review.

This is a fictional book about a woman named Ana. This is her story. Kidd has her married to Jesus, but He is a minor character - which was a disappointment for me. It’s a book about women in the time of Jesus, and interesting to read about the history of different areas. I’m still thinking if she really needed to be portrayed as the wife of Jesus. Ana was absent for most of their marriage, never observed any of his preaching or His miracles. Only His death. Making her brother Judas, was a stretch for me. It was an easy read,mostly, and I do enjoy Kidd’s writing.

I received a Netgalley digital advanced reader copy of this book. I had read other books by Sue Monk Kidd, so I was excited to be approved for this one. Unfortunately, I was really disappointed.

The premise was good. What would a wife of Jesus be like? How would this come about? I am not a great Bible scholar, so I don't know if the book was historically accurate. I do know that I didn't care about the characters and had to force myself to read it. Finally, I decided to move on to another book.

Every author is allowed to have a dud book from time to time. I guess this is the one for Sue.

Thanks to NetGalley and the publisher for providing me a digital advanced reading copy in exchange for an honest review. I find it really difficult to review this book. It certainly is not up to par with The Invention of Wings. I'd give it 3.5 stars. I enjoyed Ana's story, her spiritual journal and the way that she found her voice. I found myself caught up in the plot. However, the writing seemed lacking to me, perhaps somewhat simplistic. She was brave in taking on a controversial topic, Jesus' romantic life. Although I am not currently religious, I found it really difficult in the first part of the book to put aside the notion of Jesus that comes from my upbringing and from society in general.

WOW. I cannot say enough about this title. It was not only meticulously researched, but such a beautiful story of becoming in a time where it was not welcomed. I personally want an incantation bowl. Ana is who I want to be when I "grow up." Someone brave and brilliant and tender and loving. It is a must-read.

I was really looking forward to reading The Book of Longings. And it didn't disappoint, I wish I could give it 3.5 stars instead of 3. Somewhere between a "like" and a "really like". I do think the book will be very popular and I think it is a great pick for a book club. Lots to discuss! I enjoyed how Jesus and his family were portrayed. But at times the book moved a little slowly for me. It's not exactly my style novel so maybe I just had a harder time getting into it.