Review of The Legacy of Job's Wife
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Nisha Ward
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Review of The Legacy of Job's Wife
[Following is a volunteer review of "The Legacy of Job's Wife" by Cynthia Koelker.]
The story of Job is one of faith. It’s a story about belief, love and the strength one can find in God. That his wife tells him to curse God and die has never been in dispute, given that it is a known part of the Scripture. However, The Legacy of Job’s Wife dares to ask a simple question: why? Why would she say such a thing when Job has been so devout all his life?
I don’t know that I’m satisfied with the answer that Cynthia Koelker provides, but it is interesting in its own way. Here, she provides us with the accounting of a life, from birth to death, of a woman whose faith has never quite matched her husband’s. We meet Ix’ises as a child in the novel, watching her grow into a young woman and Job’s wife, including all the trials and tribulations that come with such a role.
I liked the book well enough to give it 3 out of 4 stars, but not enough to go further than that, I fear. While I had a lot of fun with the book, the characterisation of Ix’ises was not to my liking, so I could not give it a full rating.
That’s not to say that she isn’t a good character. Koelker does an excellent job of turning Ix’ises into a fully fleshed-out person with her own needs and desires (a courtesy extended to the rest of her cast as well). However, this fleshing out works against her in some cases, particularly when Job’s suffering starts. The way she handles both her suffering and his friends’ failures makes it so that Ix’ises becomes annoying and insufferable enough at times that I had to take a star from the book’s rating. It just made the book much less enjoyable, so I couldn’t justify a full rating.
That being said, I did find the premise itself worthy of exploration. I have a particular fondness for fictional expansions of Biblical tales, and this one was particularly fun to read. The pacing was well done, the other characters likable, for the most part, and each chapter was a page-turner. There wasn’t a point at which I could say I was bored, despite my occasional annoyance with Ix’ises. In fact, I thoroughly enjoyed the book, particularly during the wedding of Ix'ises twin sisters and her visit to her great aunt Zhabella prior to this event.
One other thing I wanted to highlight is the way Koelker handles conversations surrounding God and faith. Here, there’s a risk of sounding too preachy. However, Koelker made it so that conversations about faith and one’s trust in God came up naturally and fit the flow of the story. This just made my rating feel more justified.
The Legacy of Job’s Wife is, in addition to being professionally edited, an interesting book. Readers should check it out for several reasons, not limited to what I mentioned above, but including the variety of personalities in the cast, the way it handles disabilities and grief, and the poetry of Koelker’s writing. If you like historical novels that deal with the Biblical, then this is one to check out.
Happy reading, everyone!
******
The Legacy of Job's Wife
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon
The story of Job is one of faith. It’s a story about belief, love and the strength one can find in God. That his wife tells him to curse God and die has never been in dispute, given that it is a known part of the Scripture. However, The Legacy of Job’s Wife dares to ask a simple question: why? Why would she say such a thing when Job has been so devout all his life?
I don’t know that I’m satisfied with the answer that Cynthia Koelker provides, but it is interesting in its own way. Here, she provides us with the accounting of a life, from birth to death, of a woman whose faith has never quite matched her husband’s. We meet Ix’ises as a child in the novel, watching her grow into a young woman and Job’s wife, including all the trials and tribulations that come with such a role.
I liked the book well enough to give it 3 out of 4 stars, but not enough to go further than that, I fear. While I had a lot of fun with the book, the characterisation of Ix’ises was not to my liking, so I could not give it a full rating.
That’s not to say that she isn’t a good character. Koelker does an excellent job of turning Ix’ises into a fully fleshed-out person with her own needs and desires (a courtesy extended to the rest of her cast as well). However, this fleshing out works against her in some cases, particularly when Job’s suffering starts. The way she handles both her suffering and his friends’ failures makes it so that Ix’ises becomes annoying and insufferable enough at times that I had to take a star from the book’s rating. It just made the book much less enjoyable, so I couldn’t justify a full rating.
That being said, I did find the premise itself worthy of exploration. I have a particular fondness for fictional expansions of Biblical tales, and this one was particularly fun to read. The pacing was well done, the other characters likable, for the most part, and each chapter was a page-turner. There wasn’t a point at which I could say I was bored, despite my occasional annoyance with Ix’ises. In fact, I thoroughly enjoyed the book, particularly during the wedding of Ix'ises twin sisters and her visit to her great aunt Zhabella prior to this event.
One other thing I wanted to highlight is the way Koelker handles conversations surrounding God and faith. Here, there’s a risk of sounding too preachy. However, Koelker made it so that conversations about faith and one’s trust in God came up naturally and fit the flow of the story. This just made my rating feel more justified.
The Legacy of Job’s Wife is, in addition to being professionally edited, an interesting book. Readers should check it out for several reasons, not limited to what I mentioned above, but including the variety of personalities in the cast, the way it handles disabilities and grief, and the poetry of Koelker’s writing. If you like historical novels that deal with the Biblical, then this is one to check out.
Happy reading, everyone!
******
The Legacy of Job's Wife
View: on Bookshelves | on Amazon
"...while a book has got to be worthwhile from the point of view of the reader it's got to be worthwhile from the point of view of the writer as well." - Terry Pratchett on The Last Continent and his writing.
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