All the other characters orbit around her to reveal her brilliant longing for herself. She never fails to fulfill any of her desires. She faces no challenge that changes her from one kind of person to another. The Urban Dictionary points out that the existence of a Mary Sue often ruins the work, usually because they are able to “defy logic to simply display how amazingly radiant they are.” Some authors will give the Mary Sue a flaw “that is actually just a stale trait in disguise.” 5 Whether or not Sue Monk Kidd has wedged herself so forcibly into The Book of Longings, there can be no doubt that Ana as a personality is flat and lacks any character development. All of the other characters love Mary Sue, because she is extraordinarily helpful, talented, beautiful, or unusual, and she often drives readers absolutely crazy because she is one-dimensional and too idealized to be realistic. She plays a prominent role in the work, but she is notably devoid of flaws or a complex personality, and she usually represents the pinnacle of idealized perfection. The personality is called a ‘Mary Sue’ and is a technical term for, to quote Infobloom,Ī character in a work of fiction who exists primarily for the purpose of wish-fulfillment on the part of the author. My children recently introduced me to a name for a character type in entertainment - comics, movies, sitcoms, novels - that I kept seeing but lacked words to describe.
Let’s look together at that cultural icon - not Jesus but Ana - and her journey to discover not just herself but “the largeness” within her that “would not shrink away.” 3Īna - Deceiver, Overcomer, and Mary Sue. 2 If a stranger to this place and time were to require a primer of the ideal person, I would hand her this book. As the story unfolds, her characters near perfectly portray the values, the assumptions, the hopes, and the expectations of now. In The Book of Longings, Sue Monk Kidd paints a monochromatic spiritual landscape, tediously rehearsing the contours of feminine longing. By which I do not mean the ancient time of Jesus, but our age, our time - the twenty-first century. As such, she is the ideal heroine for such a time as this. She is fourteen years old, literate, precocious, full to the brim of longing to know and accept herself. It is the first century and Ana is the daughter of the chief scribe of Herod Antipas. Ana, who (spoiler alert) becomes his wife after suitable trials and tribulations, has tumbled to the ground in a near faint in the marketplace of Sepphoris where she has just been affianced by her father to an elderly, repulsive scoundrel. Thick knuckles, calluses, his palm a terrain of hardships.” 1 This is the moment Jesus enters the narrative of Sue Monk Kidd’s best-selling novel, The Book of Longings.
“He reached out his hand, a laborer’s hand. **Editor’s Note: This article contains spoilers for The Book of Longings: A Novel **
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