The Book of Longings

“What he heard was my life begging to be born.” 

The love story between Ana and Jesus centers not only on physical attraction, personality compatibility, and mutual respect. In the opening pages, Ana identifies herself as a strong woman who found in Jesus the release of her longings to be a writer that defined her long before the two met in the Sepphoris marketplace.

“Lord our God, hear my prayer, the prayer of my heart. Bless the largeness inside me, no matter how I fear it. Bless the words I write. May they be beautiful in your sight.” 

The dream of being a writer defines Ana, a dream that places her in opposition to her own culture. The prayer that Ana inscribes in the incantation bowl that Yaltha gifts her expresses her determination to be her own woman, to accept what she terms the largeness in her, that is the part of her heart and her soul not defined by the narrow limits of her Jewish culture.

“There was a tiny fire in them, an expressiveness I could see even from where I stood. It was as if his thoughts floated in the wet, dark light of them, wanting to be read.”

As a love story involving Jesus Christ, the novel resists reducing the relationship between Ana and Jesus to a variation on a cliche Hollywood romance. In responding to Jesus’s eyes, even though Ana at this point has no idea who the man in the marketplace is, Ana notes a need in this man, a need for love and engagement as a man.