Mary Called Magdalene by Margaret George
A book review
Readers familiar with the Christian Gospels will find Mary Called Magdalene a fairly orthodox account. George has taken the stories from the four Gospels (which differ in the episodes they recount from Jesus' life) and organized them into a coherent narrative with a setting enriched by historical and archaeological research.
The narrator is Mary Magdalene, Jesus' first woman disciple, mentioned infrequently but memorably in the Bible. Jesus frees her from possession by seven demons, and she becomes one of his followers. She is present at the crucifixion, and it is Mary Magdalene who first sees the risen Christ, mistaking him for a gardener when she visits his tomb on Easter morning. No Biblical evidence exists for the conflation of Mary with the unnamed prostitute who washes Jesus' feet with her hair.
Mary Called Magdalene emphasizes Jesus' humanity as well as his divinity, a point the Gospels also insist on despite their focus on miracles. In the novel, Mary says of Peter's bravery in facing martyrdom, "This was a greater miracle than the ones credulous people wanted to create for Jesus—walking on water, changing water into wine, multiplying food. Such things would be cheap magician's tricks, whereas the real magic was to take such weak and fallible human material and change it onto a hero beyond our human limits." Jesus' resurrection, however, is portrayed literally.
Mary's demonic possession, the story of which occupies the first third of the novel, is also portrayed literally. It begins with seeming innocence, when as a small child Mary discovers an ivory carving in the sand under her family's campsite during a journey to Jerusalem, and then gradually escalates to horror. "There were so many presences within her that she felt like a rotting animal swarming with maggots.... They all seethed within; they swelled her out as would a child in the womb, except that, unlike a child, they were everywhere, invading her very being." (2002, 630 pages)