Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana

I've recently finished reading the second in Anne Rice's 'Christ the Lord' trilogy of novels, The Road to Cana.

The trilogy's basic premise - a fictional autobiography of Christ - is interesting simply in terms of how to approach the task. In Out of Egypt, which covers Christ's childhood, Rice had apochryphal stories of Jesus' childhood to draw on in addition to the Gospel accounts but here has no source material on which to draw until she reaches the commencement of Christ's ministry. She tackles this absence of source material firstly by developing further the family life setting which she had created through Out of Egypt and secondly by pre-figuration; the idea that Jesus' responses to people and situations in his ministry may have been pre-figured by experiences in his early adulthood. The key gospel story on which Rice draws for her depiction of Christ's early adulthood is that of the woman caught in adultery.

Rice uses both techniques to good effect in The Road to Cana such that she creates a pre-history for Christ which seems consistent both with the Gospel narratives and with the character and personality of Christ which emerges from those narratives. The fictional pre-history of The Road to Cana is also dramatic and engaging; which seems to me to be a considerable achievement.

I wonder how Rice will complete the trilogy as retelling the Gospel narratives is a different challenge from the challenge of filling in the gaps that has been the primary challenge of the first two books. However, the portents are good in the way in which Gospel stories are retold and reused in the final section of The Road to Cana. It will be interesting to see whether the fictional family narrative which Rice has developed through the first two novels then influences or even swamps the retelling of the Gospel narratives. It will also be interesting to see how, as a novelist who is well read in Biblical Criticism with understanding of the differences between the Gospel narratives but who is using in this series a consistent chronological narrative, she deals with the differences between the Gospel narratives.

All these, in addition to the quality of the storytelling, are reasons for reading the existing novels in the trilogy and awaiting with interest its conclusion.

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Delirious? - King Of Fools.