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A review by sarahanne8382
Sarah by Marek Halter
3.0
Book One of the Canaan Trilogy tells the story of Abraham's wife (yes, the one from the Bible), enjoying the freedom of fiction to paint a more vivid character than that left by the Bible story focusing on her husband.
While the book does not strictly follow every word of biblical detail, that's partly because the first half of the story takes place before Sarai is mentioned in the Bible. As the biblical part of her story is picked up, Halter seems to falter in incorporating the ancient text into the colorful world he's created & the story sort of putters out. If I wasn't familiar with the biblical story, I think the ending would have seemed rather abrupt & made little sense (Sarai doesn't become Sarah until the last chapter & the birth of Isaac & what follows is quickly covered in the epilogue).
In an interview with Halter included at the end of the book, he explains that he started writing the Canaan Trilogy to highlight the forgotten importance of women in the Bible. In Sarah's case he wanted to show how Abraham's God only became the Hebrew God after Sarah accepted Him as well, so I guess ending the story when Sarai & Abram change their names as God fulfills his covenant to them makes sense, but at the same time it seemed like Halter was ready to give up the story just when people got to the part they already knew. After developing such an elaborate backstory, I wanted to see just as much detail explaining how this background added to what we already knew about Abraham and Sarah (which he does give about the trip to Egypt, & to some extent, the conception of Ishmael, but not nearly enough for anything else).
I found it interesting how well a book so focused on women's roles in ancient societies was written by a man. Only after reading Reading the Romance do I notice the one tell-tale sign that this book was written by a man. While Sarah & Abraham's love is believable, it's mainly described in physical terms & by noting the fact that they have a very active sex life, which was fine, just a little different than the emotion-saturated romances I've been craving lately. Of course there were a few conservative people writing reviews on Amazon saying that this was a smutty book & bordering on blashphemy because of that fact, but I don't really don't see what the problem is - they didn't even have sex before they were married (despite what the blurb on the back of the book may lead you to believe)! Although, to be fair, I think there were other issues that may have made them uncomfortable as well, but I think they're equally weak.
Other than the sudden ending, I really enjoyed the way this book got me wrapped up in the life of the ancient middle east.
While the book does not strictly follow every word of biblical detail, that's partly because the first half of the story takes place before Sarai is mentioned in the Bible. As the biblical part of her story is picked up, Halter seems to falter in incorporating the ancient text into the colorful world he's created & the story sort of putters out. If I wasn't familiar with the biblical story, I think the ending would have seemed rather abrupt & made little sense (Sarai doesn't become Sarah until the last chapter & the birth of Isaac & what follows is quickly covered in the epilogue).
In an interview with Halter included at the end of the book, he explains that he started writing the Canaan Trilogy to highlight the forgotten importance of women in the Bible. In Sarah's case he wanted to show how Abraham's God only became the Hebrew God after Sarah accepted Him as well, so I guess ending the story when Sarai & Abram change their names as God fulfills his covenant to them makes sense, but at the same time it seemed like Halter was ready to give up the story just when people got to the part they already knew. After developing such an elaborate backstory, I wanted to see just as much detail explaining how this background added to what we already knew about Abraham and Sarah (which he does give about the trip to Egypt, & to some extent, the conception of Ishmael, but not nearly enough for anything else).
I found it interesting how well a book so focused on women's roles in ancient societies was written by a man. Only after reading Reading the Romance do I notice the one tell-tale sign that this book was written by a man. While Sarah & Abraham's love is believable, it's mainly described in physical terms & by noting the fact that they have a very active sex life, which was fine, just a little different than the emotion-saturated romances I've been craving lately. Of course there were a few conservative people writing reviews on Amazon saying that this was a smutty book & bordering on blashphemy because of that fact, but I don't really don't see what the problem is - they didn't even have sex before they were married (despite what the blurb on the back of the book may lead you to believe)! Although, to be fair, I think there were other issues that may have made them uncomfortable as well, but I think they're equally weak.
Other than the sudden ending, I really enjoyed the way this book got me wrapped up in the life of the ancient middle east.