Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt.

CHRIST THE LORD: OUT OF EGYPT By Anne Rice (Knopf, 2005)

The Jesus in Anne Rice's new novel Christ the Lord: Out of Egypt is a two-note Johnny.

Once in a while, he's "happy." But most of the time he's gripped by "fear." I put those words in quotes because those are the words Rice uses--as simple and baldly unnuanced as you can get. Sort of like an off-and-on switch. Don't look for subtle shadings of emotion here.

This book, the first of what Rice expects will be at least three volumes, is written in the first person, from inside the head of Jesus. It opens when he is 7 and covers the next year or so of his life.

It deals with his quest to learn the mystery that everyone around him knows but won't share with him. So he doesn't find out until the end of the book that an angel appeared to Mary, and that his birth led to the murder of a lot of babies in Bethlehem. The reader, of course, is aware of all this history from the beginning, which rather [ undercuts any hope for dramatic tension.

The novel also deals with Jesus' somewhat slow-witted recognition of his miraculous powers. When it snows in Nazareth, Joseph chides Jesus for making it happen through prayer. "No!" the boy responds. "I didn't do it. Did I?"

Rice decided to take on the life story of Jesus after returning to the Catholic faith in 1998, and Christ the Lord is certainly more readable and focused than her overwrought gothic bestsellers on vampires, witches, and erotica. At least it's shorter.

A goodly number of writers more talented than Rice have tried their hand at this tale with mixed results. The best of the bunch is The Last Temptation of Christ by Nikos Kazantzakis. Like Anne Rice's character, the Jesus of Kazantzakis is caught up in a mission larger than himself, one that he comes to understand piece by piece. But his emotional range is much wider than simply happiness and fear.