TSS Week 29

After These Things is an excellent sequel to Only Human, Diski's novel about the biblical Abraham and Sarah. After These Things picks up with Isaac, their son, and his children and grandchildren. If you are familiar with the Bible, you know about Isaac and Rebekah, their twins, Jacob and Esau, and Jacob's adventures with wives Leah and Rachel. If not... it's pretty interesting reading.

It was done extremely well, just like the first novel, though at first I had a hard time latching on because I didn't like Isaac and Rebekah the way I liked Abraham and Sarah. Jacob didn't do much for me either, though of course I fell in love with the maltreated Leah, because what women without extreme coquettishness and beauty does not relate to Leah? The Bible says even God had pity on her.

I also liked that God was not a character in this novel. He was in the previous one, and he was anthropomorphic enough to be annoying. Although Diski introduced "the Editor" as narrator (which was an interesting contrivance), this character didn't do much for me and ultimately became a distraction.