Started: 4/16/2011
Completed: 4/17/2011
Recommendation: eh, unlikely to be worth your time unless you haven't read the Gospels
Recommended by: An extended family vacation led to the creation of a book discussion group and this was the #3 book voted upon by family members for us all to read.
Words I looked up:
obstreperous -- resisting control or constraint in a difficult manner; unruly
Review: Well, sadly this book was annoying. It was supposed to be a politician's view of Pilate's perspective. Instead, Pilate plays idiot savant to Mills recounting of the Gospels. There were a couple of errors that really rubbed me the wrong way and one blatant effort to forward the author's own political position. This book didn't feel like a novelization of Pilate's Memoirs, it felt more like a novelization written in the hollow voice of a flawed character that was neither investigated nor developed. One might have expected something about Pilate's childhood, but you hear about Jesus' childhood. One might have expected a ton of issues that had nothing to do with Jesus of Nazareth, yet the entirety of the book revolved around the dubious "questioning" position of Pilate who, by turns, disregards and upholds the beliefs of both Jews and Christians.
One shocking thing is that the author used Pilate's wife as a plot foil, but failed to address her death at all; a topic that was clearly of very high importance to the Pilate developed by the author. IMNSHO, this book was poorly written. I have no understanding at all how it made it onto the top 100 list of historical novels forget #2. The only list this would make for me is "Approachable Restatings of the Bible." I'd care to add that while this book might make such a list, it would be so completely buried by virtually every other book on that list as to be unfindable. Ugh.
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