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A wild read, and a bold one, combining Carrere's own discovery and loss of Catholic faith in the early 90's with a detailed, lengthy re-imagination (a "non-fiction novel" is not quite accurate, it's more like creative non-fiction with lots of sources) of the life of Luke, and by extension, Paul, and by extension, Jesus.Before reading THE KINGDOM, I didn't know much about the writers of the gospels - I'd read the works themselves, but a long time ago - and I enjoyed the alignment between Carrere
In the last pages of this book, Carrère comments on his experience washing feet at a retreat held at a home for the physically and mentally challenged, in response to the urging of a correspondent. Still, I wouldn’t like to be touched by grace and return home converted like twenty-four years earlier just because I’ve washed some feet. Thankfully nothing of the sort happens.This is a thoughtful, engaging, and provocative book. Provocative in a good way, as Carrère invites the reader to participat...
I keep wavering on this book, and I think in the end I’ll take the optimistic, glass-half-full attitude and consider Emmanuel Carrere to be a “Second Friend.” I take this term from how CS Lewis described Owen Barfield: “But the Second Friend is the man who disagrees with you about everything. … He has read all the right books but has got the wrong thing out of every one. It is as if he spoke your language but mispronounced it. How can he be so nearly right and yet, invariably, just not right?”I’...
P-review (ie, Preview)This book was recently reviewed in the New Yorker by James Wood. One doesn't often see a review of a book that's been something of a best-seller for about three years already. Presumably the English translation (from French) took most of that time to appear. Maybe the thought was that this novel(?), this imaginative history of early Christianity(?), this personal journey of the author from rationalist to believer to ...(?) - well, however it's described, and Wood hints at a...
I read this too long ago to review properly; what I mostly remember, at this remove, is that Carrere seems like the sort of person I'd run away from at a bar--unable, or unwilling, to see that there's no difference between his past, self-satisfied Catholicism, and his present, self-satisfied, well, bourgeoisdom. I was expecting to really like the thing, since I'm interested in the bible, and in conversion stories, and in world-weary scepticism, but I suspect that you'd just have to be much, much...
I’m agnostic: the rating isn’t due to any ideological perspectives I hold on the subject matter. I picked up the book after reading a review with Knausgaard where he’d mentioned it. The Kingdom also received some stellar reviews from various newspapers. I found this book to be very dull. The first two sections were the most interesting (those regarding his manic depressive tendencies and family life). Thereafter his theological ramblings begin. Oh dear. Quit the mundane scholar we have on our ha...
Ok, as many reviews have suggested, you have to get past the relentless and overwhelming narcissism of the book before you realize you are reading an absolute masterpiece. Given our times, I suppose that it is somehow suiting that a book so taken with the self like this could become a representative masterpiece and it is interesting that the book functions so well as such. Even the Bible is here to illuminate the hero's self-love. Not what can he say about life and the early church but what can
