Christ The Lord

I was so bored at the hospital that I went into the second hand book store. I stumbled upon Anne Rice's telling of Jesus early life... Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt. I had been meaning to read it sometime back, but never got down to reading it. The paperback edition was just released 1st Nov (see her website), and I was glad that I stumbled upon it.

I have always been a big fan of Anne Rice's novels... ever since I watched Interview with the Vampire. I remember dragging my parents to the old plantation house where they filmed the movie when we visited New Orleans in '98. I just wanted to soak in the feeling, that macabre, mystical, misty, rich, dank and sensuous ambience that was conveyed in the movie. The irony is that I haven't read much of her novels... the only one I read in entirety was Memnoch the Devil.

The book is a page-turner... I would have finished it if Laura hadn't wanted something to read, I graciously gave up the book to her. I guess I wanted to savour it as well, slowly. I found it really opportune reading this during Advent, because it provides me an opportunity to reflect upon the Christmas stories again. The stories that are so familiar simple yet so profound. I enjoyed how Anne Rice delves into these stories, some apocryphal to bring Jesus the Child to flesh. Laura and I reading it could imagine the sounds and smells of Jesus' home in Nazareth.

The book also inspired me to read more of the Old Testament...simply because these the stories that Jesus was told when he was growing up, the heroic stories of King David, Jonah, Tobit. I really like this quote from the book.

"Rabbi Jacimus was hard in his ways, but he was a gentle man, a wise man, and he told wonderful stories. Stories were our history, and who we were, and there were times when I liked nothing better than stories. Yet I was coming to understand something of greatest importance: all stories were part of one great story, the story of who we were. I hadn't seen it so clearly before, but now it was so clear that it thrilled me."