cover image Daughter of the Shining Isles

Daughter of the Shining Isles

Elizabeth Cunningham. Barrytown Limited, $24.95 (362pp) ISBN 978-1-58177-060-5

According to the publicity material accompanying her new book, novelist Cunningham (The Return of the Goddess) is descended from nine generations of Episcopal priests. She resisted the temptation to become a Christian priest herself, but proudly calls herself a priestess, and has written reams of feminist, neo-pagan fiction. In this novel, the first in a projected trilogy, Cunningham introduces us to Mary Magdalen, Celtic-style. Here, Mary, called Maeve, is born in the Land of Women in 4 B.C.E. As a young woman, she moves to Mona to study at a druidic university. There she meets Esus--aka Jesus--who is also studying there during his so-called lost years. In Maeve, Cunningham has blended the perky insouciance of Sabrina the teenage witch with the penetrating common sense of Jane Austen's Elizabeth Bennett. She speaks in a refreshingly modern voice--""Yes, I know. Girl hero is awkward, like woman doctor.... But I balk at the word heroine. A personal quirk."" But awkward locutions creep into this historical fantasy (""It was the blood, my woman's blood!""), and much of the novel reads like a poor imitation of Ursula Le Guin. At times, Cunningham tries too hard to prove her bona fides; her references to the Talmud, for example, hardly blend in seamlessly. (""You'll find this very discussion in a volume called Taharoth, in the tractate Niddah, chapter 9, Mishnah 5."") The endearing protagonist almost makes plowing through the tendentious, turgid prose worthwhile. Almost, but not quite. (June)