Bound in a smooth white hard back, the 321 page book is protected with white paper that is trimmed in gold. A small image encircled also in the same shiny gold sits in the center. It is an angelic young man and the title reads 'CHRIST THE LORD' in all capitals. Could this be from the same author that has strengthened her writing career with the infamous Vampire Lestat and the Mayfair Witches? This book promises something entirely different and to those that love Anne Rice for her ideals and methods, it is something very much the same. A triumph of tone - her prose lean, vivid - and character...'Christ The Lord' is a cross between a historical novel and an update of Tolstoy's The Gospels in Brief; it presents Jesus as nature mystic, healer, prophet and very much a real young boy. -Kirkus Reviews Once calling New Orleans home, Anne Rice now resides in La Jolla, California with her properties in Louisiana being for sale even before the hurricane Katrina. She has fought a battle with diabetes and lost her husband, poet Stan Rice, far too soon. She announced on television in an interview that she had been in a very dark place of her life. When she was coming out of that dark period she was able to write her latest novel and dedicated to her son Christopher.
It is fiction. We know it is fiction by its genre and she makes no other claim. However, she writes with a realism, as if she was there, or is there and we are getting the story first hand. This is the style of Anne Rice, literary diva of the dark, so she has been called. I was a bit surprised by the title of her new book and what to expect from it. All other books I have read from Anne Rice have been thrillers about vampires or witches and when not, they were about haunting or memories of a darker time period. The single thing that always remains giving her books their flavor, is she becomes the main character herself. It would be a challenge for most but for Rice it is art, her art.
Excerpt from "Christ The Lord: Out Of Egypt'" Chapter 1
I was seven years old. What do you know when you're seven years old? All my life, or so I thought, we'd been in the city of Alexandria, in the Street of the Carpenters, with the other Galileans, and sooner or later we were going home.
Late afternoon. We were playing, my gang against his, and when he ran at me again, bully that he was, bigger than me, and catching me off balance, I felt the power go out of me as I shouted: "You'll never get where you're going."
He fell down white in the sandy earth, and they all crowded around him. The sun was hot and my chest was heaving as I looked at him. He was so limp.
In the snap of two fingers everyone drew back. It seemed the whole street went quiet except for the carpenters' hammers. I'd never heard such a quiet.
"He's dead!" Little Joseph said. And then they all took it up. "He's dead, he's dead, he's dead."
I knew it was true. He was a bundle of arms and legs in the beaten dust.
And I was empty. The power had taken everything with it, all gone. Continue with more of Chapter 1 'Christ The Lord; Out Of Egypt' is one of 26 books authored by Anne Rice. Other best sellers include 'The Vampire Chronicles', The Mayfair Witches ('The Witching Hour', 'Taltos', and 'Lasher'), 'Servant Of The Bones' and 'Cry To Heaven'.
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