欧宝娱乐

In all honesty, I didn't want to like Orson Scott Card's novel, "Saints", when I picked it up this time. I had read it twice before, and it bugged me both of those times, so I didn't expect anything to be different. But it has been close to a decade since I last read it, and I am a big fan of Card, so I thought I'd give it another shot. And while I can't say I particularly liked it, it had some redeeming values that I had overlooked in the past.

As a Latter-day Saint (or Mormon), I have been on the receiving end of the "look" folks give. You know, when some off-shoot of the LDS church gets arrested because some guy has thirty wives, half of them under the age of 13. No matter how much I protest that we are not them, folks give me the "look" and lump our missionaries in with the publicized groups. And so, picking up a book about polygamy raised my hackles from the offset.

First, the things I didn't like about the novel, other than the basic premise. I didn't appreciate the nonfiction approach the introduction took. Yes, yes, we should all have noticed that the "author's note" is signed "O. Kirkham" and not "O. Card." But, frankly, I was about twelve when I read the novel, and so I foolishly thought it was fact. I hate that distrustful narrator. I didn't like it in Crichton's "Eaters of the Dead," and I don't like it now, even when I knew all the way through this was fiction.

I didn't like the way the narrator had the gall to stick us in Joseph Smith's head and assume what he was thinking. Perhaps I am overly sensitive on the subject, having received "the look" more than once, but as many people have harped on the subject of Joseph Smith, you would think the writer could be more sensitive, particularly if he is going to make him "human." If he's going to humanize him, or portray him "realistically", then why not do it from the outside. Even as I type this, I realize it is stupid - I enjoy a good historical fiction, and love Card's "Women of Genesis" series especially, series where he puts us in the heads of scriptural folks. But for some reason, people are more prone to say, "See, Joseph Smith was a fraud" than they are to say "See, Abraham was a fake." Probably because more people believe the Bible is true than believe in the Book of Mormon.

One tiny thing that bugged me - there is more profanity in this novel than any of Card's other novels. I would have expected more swearing from his science fiction stories than from his novel about the Saints. And I really did not enjoy having the apostles swearing. Great, fine, they are human and painted so - but it doesn't need to be done so repeatedly crudely. This is one of Card's early novels, so I am sure he thought more readers would be LDS than not. He did, however, manage to drastically reduce the profanity once he got us out of London, which was appreciated.

Last thing I didn't like, and this isn't really the author's fault: lack of documentation. I guess I have just been spoiled by Gerald Lund, who documents so many of his historical fiction in full. Although I am not overly comfortable by the humanizing of Joseph Smith, I could have swallowed it better if it had been footnoted. Did Joseph really engage in fights against river rats? I think I could have handled the scene better if there was some reference to bounce off of.

You might think, from this list, that I really didn't like the book very much. Frankly, it wasn't until I was about 2/3rds of the way through that I finally caught the message the author was beating on (and it came from one of the fictionalized author's notes; Card did use those in good stead). The point was this: the majority of the women depicted in the novel as participants in plural marriage were not shrinking violets. They were strong women, women of steel. Here we have a woman who spoke what she thought, who refused to be carried, who fought to stand on her own, and she entered into plural marriage. This was not someone overpowered by charisma or too weak to say "no." The same was true of many of the other wives - Harriette, Sally, Vilate. This was the redeeming power of the knowledge, that it showed the true mettle of many of the women. Indeed, Dinah seems well modeled after Eliza Snow, a real LDS woman who was married to both Joseph Smith and Brigham Young.

I can't say I like the way Emma Smith was portrayed, but then again, the author does a good job of redeeming her. It is fact that she rejected Joseph's teachings of plural marriage; it is fact that she disliked Brigham Young; it is fact that she did not come with the church. And so she, like Joseph, is not portrayed as perfect. But she is portrayed as strong, as a woman who loves her husband, who struggles through so much (and I would pray daily never to have to suffer a tenth of what Emma suffered), who tried to do the right thing but who just could not give what God asked her to give up, having given up so much else.

I completely enjoyed the first part of the novel - as much as you can enjoy a tragedy, of course. The author really set the stage for Dinah's life in Nauvoo, and showed us just how strong she was. There were a couple points I didn't like about her conversion - the conversion itself seems weakly described, although it is surely difficult to accurately describe such a deeply intense and personal thing. I also disliked the way she seemed to focus on Joseph from so far away; it could be easily read that she had a fixation and so of course she would wind up marrying him, although I think the author was trying to show us that it was the Lord's will for them to be sealed from the start. Because the conversion seemed shallow, I can see how nonmembers would criticize Dinah for leaving her children. Even as a member with a strong and deep testimony, I am not sure I could do such a thing (and pray I never have to); of the many trials endured by the early Saints, I never even pictured this one, though I am sure it happened on occasion. But still, Dinah's words and actions make her seem more obsessive towards Joseph - "I left behind my children for you" - than Jesus. But the characterization of Dinah, Robert, Charlie, and Anna was all very well done.

Again, the redeeming point of this novel is that it shows the lives and attitudes of strong women and their dreams of a sisterhood of plural wives. But if you can't handle a humanistic - whether realistic or not, I don't know, but definitely a humanistic - view of Joseph Smith, this book is not for you. Oh, yes, and I am still not sure how it was originally billed as a romance; Card needs to avoid the romance genre.