Margaret George: Mary, Called Magdalen

[bibliogramma]

Unlike the other of George's biographical novels i've reaf, which are grounded in historical fact, well preserved in existing documents, this treatment of Mary of Magdala draws equally on what is known of the times from secular documents, and on Biblical and other religious sources, without any questions concerning the historicity of the latter. George tells a compelling story about the most well-known of Jesus' female disciples, but writes of prophetic dreams and visions, miracles, driving out demons and the death and resurrection of Jesus as literal truths, without the devices that, in her novel of Henry VIII for instance, allowed us to see where the subject of the novel may be an unreliable narrator with respect to their own motivations and beliefs.

I enjoyed the book, but as a non-Christian, I read it more as historical fantasy than straight historical fiction. It was much like reading a novel of King Arthur where the writer has done detailed research into the historical period and presents that faithfully, but includes all of the supernatural tales of Merlin and Morgana's magic, the tale of the Green Knight who, beheaded, returns to life, and other such elements of the mythos as if they too were undisputed historical fact.