Waking the Messiah

by JoAnne Soper-Cook

Jesus Christ has returned - and hes living in the mind of a mad woman. For Moriah, am emotionally disturbed woman, her strange memories of a life in Galilee are at odds with the facts of her life,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1550811436
• ISBN13: 9781550811438
• Release Date: April 1994
• Publisher: Breakwater Books
• Length: 168 Pages
• Weight: 0.40 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.0" x 9.0"

Customer Reviews

If You Liked Waking the Messiah...

(. . .)P>JoAnne Soper-Cook - resident of St. John's and twice-published author (Waking The Messiah; The Wide World Dreaming) - ventures into new territory with her third novel: "A Cold-Blooded Scoundrel" This is her first e-<br>book, and this Victorian mystery is as innovative a yarn as the medium in which it is published.<p>Scotland Yard Inspector Philip Devlin's past comes back to haunt him when a series of gruesome murders<br>unsettles Victorian London, and most especially the Yard. Why does the killer single out Devlin for his game of cat and mouse? Is his killing spree something personal?<p>Interwoven into the suspense of this story is a generous dose of humour, provided by the warm-hearted Devlin<br>himself, as well as his motley group of assistants, amongst them a charmingly inept, infatuated constable, a<br>pair of elegant graverobbers and a couple of free-thinking sapphites, all of whom have a colourful history and<br>personality of their own (. . .)

I was hooked from the start....

I really enjoyed this book. I found it disturbing and involving and sometimes shocking, but most of all I found it very readable. The narrator's voice pulls you into her world from the first page, and although there are times you may not like her very much you feel for her at every moment. You can't help but hear the autobiographical note in this story, JoAnne Soper Cook brings all the characters to life, the harsh fundamentalist father, the ineffective mother, the narrow minded population of a small NF town. And especially the character of Jesus who is trapped in Moriah's head and tells us of his childhood, his unwitting elevation to Messiah, and his death. I would recommend this book as a fascinating look inside the mind of a madwoman, a warning about the dangers of fanatical religion, but most of all as a really entertaining read. If this is Miss Soper-Cook's first novel I look forward to more from her.

Fascinating; unfolds with appalling inevitability

I bought this book after following the later stages of its journey to publication on an Internet newsgroup. Else, I would never have known of its existence. It was published by Breakwater Books, a small publisher in Newfoundland. I was privileged to live part of my life on that foggy island off the East Coast of Canada, which was a second reason for my initial interest.Waking the Messiah is the strange tale of a woman named Moriah, confined in an asylum for the murder of her father, an abusive religious fanatic. It is a weird tale that takes us into the chaotic, time-warped world of the insane. Her world only becomes weirder when we gradually discover that Jesus Christ is returning to earth inside the mind of this mad woman. Really returning, and gradually displacing the miscellaneous personalities that Moriah has generated to protect herself. From whom? From the voices, the same voices that nagged her into pushing a screwdriver into her father's back. Parallel to this appalling transformation is that of her psychiatrist Stiller, who himself evolves into the matching Judas for this new incarnation of the Christ.A reviewer is supposed to refer to a tale of this type as "disturbing", and I suppose it is, in an entertaining sort of way. All I know is that I kept it in my backpack; twice a day, as I settled in for the half-hour rail commute between work and home, I would pull it out and devour another few pages. It was fascinating in the manner of a really bad traffic accident, or the terminal saga of JFK, Jr. Those who have read Donald Westlake's "The Ax", another adventure into the alien mind of the insane, will know exactly what I mean.JoAnne Soper-Cook, "Waking the Messiah", Breakwater Books, St. John's, NF, Canada, 1999, $16.95 US.