Joseph is just the carpenter you’d want to install your kitchen: an honest, diligent craftsman who does the job properly. When his girlfriend falls pregnant he helps raise her child even though he can’t be the father. The boy is clever and charismatic. When he grows up he becomes popular for speaking his mind and hence poses a threat to the dictatorship that rules his Middle Eastern country. His fate is arrest, torture and execution. This is a modern retelling of the Bible story, the quiet tale of a quiet man, yet moving because Joseph is so well realised as an ordinary person put through extraordinary suffering. John MacKenna’s book is well crafted, with an unwavering point of view, believable characters and clearly evoked settings. The depiction of Joseph’s girlfriend as a sexy, materialistic user is interesting. My only quibble is with the characters’ use of a distinctly Irish lexicon. This must be deliberate, but I found it jarring in a story set in the Middle East.
