Rating: 
Summary: Letdown
Review: I read The Memoirs of Cleopatra and was enthralled. I picked this one up, hoping to be similarly enchanted. I was quite disappointed. I realize the difficulties involved in writing religious fiction, especially one with Jesus as a main character, so I'll leave out my opinion on that. But religious variations aside, this book was just not up to Margaret George's standards. Although it started out good, it just progressively got duller.
As Mary grew older, she grew more and more perfect. She is near flawless and the few "mistakes" she does make are in the best interest of someone else and thus, not really mistakes. I think having a more human heroine would have made this story a little better. This Mary just gets annoying. Secondly, while Margaret George usually has impeccable accuracies in her historical facts, this book had quite a few discrepancies. Regardless of what your personal beliefs are, when writing a biblical story, the bible should be used as historical source. George puts her interpretation of things on it, always favoring Mary, which would be fine under any other circumstances but doesn't work so well with a biblical story. One thing that particularly irritated me was the persistant mention of the power of Satan and his followers. However, the Jewish people (I've been informed) believe in evil but not this one particular manifestation, much less Beelzebub or other such devils. And these characters were originally Jews. All in all, I found this story to be uninspired and rather dull. I still await George's next book and hope she takes it on with a little more passion and innovation.
Rating: 
Summary: Great idea - disappointing results
Review: George starts out with a great idea - choose a relatively minor character from a momentous time and build the personal into the historical. And she starts out well, setting up several interesting scenarios - close friends not accepted by the family, a mysterious yet alluring youth, religious factions vying for recognition and power, a young daughter taken from her mother who longs to simply speak to her. But unfortunately, about half-way through the novel the author resorts to merely repeating historical and biblical stories the reader already knows. And she does it not with a profound faith the early Christians must have felt, but by simply presenting what happened and largley ignoring how they felt and their reasons for abandoning everything and following this strange new church and its ideas. She leaves many questions unanswered or answered too simply. And such shortchanging of the reader's interest is disappointing. We want to know what happens to these people who were important to Mary throughout the book, but in the end, they are seemingly shoved out of the way to get to the end of the story. George let us down and she let down a potentially very interesting premise.
Rating: 
Summary: Dull, plodding...
Review: I learned a lot about dried fish, ritual washing and exocism. Sigh. I have loved all of Margaret George's previous novels, my personal favorite is the Autobiography of Henry VIII. This book is so earnest. It wants the characters to be human, but refuses to take the risks. Instead of passion, the apostles are reduced to juvenille bickering. All the disciples are jealous whiners. How much time can be spent by Mary wondering if Jesus likes the other formerly possessed chick better than her? Maybe I was expecting something more shocking, less pious...Maybe I was expecting something better. I borrowed this one from the library. Glad I resisted the temptation to buy it.
Rating:
Summary: A disappointing "Mary Magdalene Superstar"
Review: I was a big fan of Margaret George's other books, but they were about truly central figures in history like Henry the Eighth and Cleopatra. By choosing to write about the relatively obscure Mary of Magdala, Ms. George paints herself into a corner--she has to make her subject seem more important than it really is. So Mary, implausibly, becomes the center of every single important event, while -- most regrettably -- Our Lord Jesus Christ fades into the background as little more than a cheesy faith healer who changes Mary's life. This book is a sad disservice to the devout as well as to students of history.
Rating:
Summary: This god is too small
Review: I was excited to find this book featured by the door of an interesting bookstore in St. Simons, GA. The excitement faded fast. (Reading the book actually goes fast, too.) Initially I was struck by how easily the author sketches a life for the child Mary that feels so much like middle class children of today, minus some technology. The first of many red flags sprang up when the little ivory idol begins speaking - eventually it will "cause" Mary's pregnancy when God, as the book seems fond of pointing out, fails. I was surprised that seemingly conservative reviewers thought the identifying of Mary's demons as living, powerful gods worshipped throughout the ancient world could pass muster.
Jesus is introduced early - a slightly older boy who discusses lizards. I noticed that reviewers, professional and nonprofessional, spoke generously of the author's research; some even suggested that she followed the Bible carefully. I didn't think the research that astounding, nor did I think her weaving in and out of the Gospels particularly accurate - minimizing, even distorting, would be better descriptions of her treatment of Scripture. As for the customs of the age, she prefers something more like Hollywood in her insistent modernizing of Mary. She has Mary repeatedly traveling with men (often just Mary and one other man - even Jesus gets to do this, sleeping cozily in the field, albeit chastely, with Mary) something which no respectable Jewish man or woman of the time could condone.
Jesus comes across as an amiable, somewhat (only somewhat) mysterious man with a rather unclear sense of his mission, even its beginning point. Mary becomes insufferable in her role as equal apostle, wisest and most visionary.
I regret the purchase of this book and the time spent "giving it a chance." It doesn't deserve one. To do a little twisting myself of a famous work, the god portrayed here is too small.
Rating: 
Summary: Wonderful story!
Review: We read this book in our book club and all loved it! I really felt like I got to know the personality of each of the players in this story. The detail about the world that Mary lived in, beginning when she was seven years old, helped me gain a new perspective on these times. This was my first Margaret George experience and it won't be my last.
Rating:
Summary: A total disappointment...
Review: When I first heard Margaret George had another novel coming out, I was excited. I had just read "The Memoirs of Cleopatra," an excellent novel full of vivid descriptions that seem to transport the reader to the world of Cleopatra. Unfortunately, I found "Mary, Called Magdalene" to be a total disappointment. The writing is minimal and bland, and the descriptions fail to bring the setting and characters to life. The one-dimensional, undeveloped characters were not interesting, and I did not care about them in any way. The episodes of demonic posession, which were supposed to be a time of terror in Mary's life, were poorly written, and almost laughable. I gave up after about 200 pages, not thinking I could stand to endure another 400 or so. I only hope George's next book is as good as "The Memoirs of Cleopatra" was, and that "Mary Called Magdalene" was only a fluke...
Rating: 
Summary: Can you get by the religion?
Review: George takes a leap with this project and almost certainly opened herself up for criticism from both the believers and the non believers. As you might expect with any project such as this there is lots of room for an agenda by the author. I however found none or at least minimal. I found the book to be a delightful view of the time of Christ through the eyes of a woman. There is of course a huge amount of artistic license taken since we have such minimal information about Mary. If you can read the book objectively and not try to overlay it with your own "doctrine" I think you will find it well written and very enjoyable. It does cover much ground that most people already know from the story of Jesus, but for me it was a wonderful, personal view of the lifestyle that might have been experienced by a Jewish woman who lived in the time of Christ. As a bonus we got to see the story of Jesus and his apostles through her eyes. I would highly recommend it.
Rating:
Summary: Falls way short
Review: Since I loved George's other books, I made the false assumption that this one would be as interesting and well written. No such luck. The dialogue was stilted and boring. None of the characters were likeable. I would not have followed anyone of them based on the what George has written. As egalitarian as Jesus supposedly was, this character of the Magalene would have never existed in that time and place. Projecting modern values left this book practically void of history. Of course, this "story" is based for the most part on faith rather than historical fact unlike George's other books and apparently George's faith interpretation is uniquely her own. She might as well have called it Mary Magdalene the Superhero. Totally unbelieveable and void of feeling. Don't bother.
Rating:
Summary: For true believers only
Review: Was Mary M. a prostitute? Apparently not, or at least not in this earnest, PG-rated version of her life. Ms. George spends most of her time trying to prove that Mary was not only a good girl but the best disciple Jesus ever had. The question is whether you care. If the answer is "yes", you might like this long rather boring book. Unfortunately, if you want to see the people of the Bible brought to life as believable human beings, you won't find that here, where everyone talks in sermons. There's too much preaching and not enough storytelling; the whole thing reads like a Sunday School lesson that goes on forever.
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