The Book of Longings

The events between Ana’s aborted betrothal and the loss of her child mark her transition into adulthood. In this section, Ana moves away from her childhood obsession with writing as she must engage real-time dilemmas. Despite a variety of life-changing moments covered in this section, including the death of her betrothed, her marriage to Jesus, and the death of her child, Ana does not write. In fact, this section ends with Ana’s rejection of writing, her determination that her sorrow over the loss of her child stills her voice. The section closes at the novel’s nadir: Ana, a grieving mother, rejects writing, thus silencing her own voice.

The section defines Ana as at once defiant and helpless, strong and weak. In her frank talk with Phasaelis, Ana defies Herod’s wife’s assumption that Ana would succumb to a loveless, arranged marriage. “I AM NO LAMB (90),” she declares fiercely, the capital letters underscoring the depth of her defiance. And yet her fast-approaching marriage with Nathaniel drives her to desperation. She cannot find a way out of a marriage she sees as a sacrifice of her essential self. She cannot bring herself to write. The missive that arrives from Phasaelis inviting Ana to the palace is on such fine ivory pages that they make Ana, now estranged from her writing, weep. Her prayer to Yahweh to kill her betrothed inevitably raises questions about the machinations of God the Father who, to facilitate the marriage of his son to Ana, sanctions the death of Nathaniel. Ana herself is certain her prayer did nothing, that it was a cry of hopelessness and not an actual petition. She has no knowledge that the man in the marketplace for whom she has fallen is in fact divine, is in fact God’s son. It is left to speculation whether God interfered on behalf of his son.

Nathaniel’s sudden death exposes the degree of Ana’s unconventional personality. She refuses to mourn, only pretends to grieve. She wears the traditional garments of bereavement, but in her heart she does not mourn. That giddy sense of freedom marks her for punishment by the Jewish community. She refuses to conform to their expectations. She is not happy that the fever carried off Nathaniel, but she is happy to be free. She goes to the rooftop of her house and dances “as close to the sky as I could get […] I dance for Sophia. I dance for myself” (116).

That Ana quickly realizes the death of Nathaniel brings her no real joy leads the section into reintroducing the powerful presence of Jesus. Jesus disperses the mob that is intent on stoning Ana because of her unconventional and presumably sinful behavior, a scene that foreshadows the familiar story of Jesus later rescuing the prostitute Mary Magdalene from a similarly menacing crowd. In their interlude at the cave, the two break bread, foreshadowing again a critical element of Jesus’s public ministry. In Jesus, Ana finds comfort and support. Jesus does not judge her inability to mourn a man she hardly knew. He shares his childhood as a child born out of wedlock. The two find common group as outcasts, which forges a powerful bond. He says, “You have suffered much” (121), according her a depth of emotion denied by those in town. When Jesus sheepishly asks whether Ana will take him as her husband, Ana feels a “curious feeling…that I was always meant to arrive at this moment” (136).

The novel’s move to Nazareth is jolting. Gone are the amenities of Ana’s pampered life. Gone are the luxurious accommodations, the train of servants, the time to devote to her reading and writing. The hard-scrapple life of Jesus’s family introduces Ana to the reality of work. She has few skills; her assignment to tend the goats recognizes as much. Who dominates Jesus’s home life is the figure of Mary. Her quiet humility and generous spirit immediately impress Ana. The conception of Mary here parallels the traditional portrait of Jesus’s mother. Mary emerges as a human figure rather than a sacred icon, though Kidd never denies her divinity outright:

I guessed her to be near the age of my mother, but she was far more frayed by her years. Her face, so like her son’s, was well worn from chores and childbearing. She had a slight rounding in her shoulders, and the corners of her mouth had begun to droop slightly, but I thought how lovely she looked standing there with the sun filtering through the leaves, coins of light on her shoulder (141).

Given that aura, Mary balances the very human and the divine. When Ana shares her incantation bowl with Jesus, when she confides her ambition to write, to have her voice heard, to Jesus, far from condemning such dreams, he merely smiles at Ana; his smile convinces Ana that “I knew my husband and he knew me” (146).

But for the remainder of this section Ana has little time to develop her writing. Jesus looks at the scrolls Ana brings with her from Sepphoris and understands the importance of her work. If the routine of the house denies Ana the chance to write, that hiatus is temporary. “You will write again, Ana. One day you will” (155). It comes across to Ana as more than a promise. It has the weight of a foretelling. “The thought [of not writing] saddened me, but from that night I did not doubt he understood my longing” (153). Ana engages in the work of helping to run the home with her new family and above all awaiting the return each night of her loving husband. The view of their marriage in this section reflects the simple, unadorned nature of the couple’s love. Although the idea of Jesus having a wife, much less doting on her, offends many Christians even today, the section reveals an unassuming love between two extraordinarily ordinary people.

There are hints of Jesus’s divine ministry certainly. Finding the beaten Tabitha along the road foreshadows the familiar parable of the Good Samaritan and Ana’s freeing of the penned lambs in the marketplace foretells her husband’s embrace of the role of good shepherd. But in this section Jesus and Ana emerge as complex people devoted to each other.

What troubles Ana is her uncertainty over accepting the conventional role of mother. She and Jesus have frank discussions over Ana’s fears over the uncertainty of pregnancy and her reluctance to conceive. He refuses to condemn her, refuses to impress upon her the expectations that a woman provides children. Although the novel makes clear the two enjoy a satisfying sex life, Ana takes a homeopathic medicine reputed to prevent pregnancy. When that fails, however, the couple embrace the idea of becoming parents. It is a tender interlude that shows the humanity of Jesus. He fawns over his wife. He ruminates on what a child will bring to them. He dotes over Ana. He is an expectant father, uneasy over the time he must spend away from his pregnant wife because of his work. Indeed, he is away when Ana’s labor begins and the baby dies.

The death of the child marks the nadir of Ana’s evolution as a woman and as a writer. Uncharacteristically, she despairs. The death of her child leaves her empty. Nothing can fill that void. She claims the absence is an “empty place” that she will “carry…like a secret all the days of [her] life” (181). She faces the death initially alone. Jesus is off working. In the burial of her child, Ana experiences death as an absolute. This is not like Nathaniel’s death from the fever. This is not some miracle-in-waiting. There is no miracle here, no Lazarus-come-forth redemption. When Jesus does return, he feels as helpless as Ana. This is death, cold and unyielding, without the Christian concept of resurrection. Ana cannot even find the appropriate words of grief to console herself or her husband; her family’s reassurance that she and Jesus can have other children does little to assuage her grief. For the first time in the novel, Ana feels alone.