ALTARS OF STONE
Book One of The Line of Shem trilogy
By Corrinne Brixton
Troubador. 352 pages. £9.99
ISBN 978 1 789 017 076
As a busy mum of three boys under five, a book really has to hook me to get me to read it and this certainly works from that perspective.
Focusing on the emotions and imagined stories of peripheral characters in some very famous Bible stories, Altars of Stone seeks to ‘enrich both new and established readers of the Bible, with geographical, cultural and historical details’ (from the book’s blurb).
‘Is this allowed?’
But that hits on the issue… conservative Christians will constantly be looking over their shoulders while reading this and thinking ‘is this allowed?’ It seems the author was also thinking this as she wrote the book, since there is a detailed disclaimer at the beginning, telling us that the Bible is the best book to read and that the word of God can’t be added to.
As I’ve wrestled with the rights and wrongs of such a venture, one thing I’m fairly convinced of is that I don’t think the book is doing much more than we would naturally do when reading the Bible, asking questions like: ‘I wonder how that person was really feeling when that happened?’ Brixton has just written a whole novel trying to answer that question honestly.
This book might be a good one to give someone who enjoyed the film Noah that came out a few years ago. In fact the book actually starts with the Noah narrative but, unlike the film, the book attempts to give some actual historical context.
So you’ll enjoy this if you’re already into the niche genre of ‘Christian Historical Fiction’. Although it’s certainly a new one for me.
