Author Sue Monk Kidd. | Tony Pearce / CC BY-SA 4.0
If there’s one word that characterises our post-pandemic existence, it is “longing”. Whether of outdoor indulgences or social interaction, we’re suffused with unfulfilled urges. No two people feel this more urgently than lovers parted by travel bans.
At the heart of Sue Monk Kidd’s fourth bestseller,
The Book of Longings, is a tale of similar deprivation. Of course, it joins a long list of creative reimaginings of the modern world’s most celebrated messiah. What if, Kidd asks, Jesus had a wife? It’s not a new question, to be sure. Long is the list of stabs at this alluring idea that has for centuries aggravated conservatives and clergy.