Knocking on Heaven’s Door

Those standing on the sidelines might not be blamed for thinking Anne Rice and Jodi Picoult have slipped a cog. Both authors enjoy a status something beyond bestersellerdom. Rice, of course, is best known for her vampire books, Picoult for the sort of puddingy nonsense fraught with moral dilemmas and adult emotional angst. However, as Bloomberg says while Rice’s Christ the Lord: The Road to Cana (Knopf) and Picoult’s Change of Heart (Atria) hit the stands, both writers have recently been trying on a different stance:

Fornicating vampires helped Anne Rice sell more than 100 million copies of her books worldwide. Lately she has been writing about Jesus.

Bloomberg’s Edward Nawotka is fairly gentle with the goddess Rice. However, the gloves slides off when he moves to Picoult.

The plot allows Picoult to transubstantiate her book from an intriguing melodrama into a contrived disquisition on morality, religion and the separation of church and state.

Ouch. The full piece is here.