Dear and Glorious Physician by Taylor Caldwell

3.97 AVERAGE

elusiverica's review

2.0
The fictionalised story of the life of St Luke, a Greek doctor who wrote one of the gospels and the book of Acts. I usually like this sort of thing, but this one just didn’t work for me. Lucanus didn’t seem realistic to me. He was incredibly moral and a miraculously skilled physician devoted to the welfare of the poor and needy, and that part makes sense. But it seemed unnecessary for him to also be aware of Jesus Christ from the moment of his birth, stunningly beautiful, a martial arts master who can defeat Olympic wrestlers in one second, a brilliant athlete, and beloved of the Emperor even though he met the man once and was not polite. And a Roman slave noted that Lucanus had the palest skin he’d ever seen - that makes zero sense, a Greek man who’d just returned from spending four years in Egypt would not be particularly pale, and the only reason to put that in is the fucked up notion that because he’s the hero, he must be super white. Whiter than any other character! Ugh. And the undertones of racism, misogyny, and homophobia meant this wasn’t a very pleasant reading experience even though I maybe should have been expecting it from a book written in the ‘50s.