The Holy Embrace

In imaginatively reworking the biblical story of how Abraham and Sarah begot Isaac, progenitor of the Jews, Italian author Brelich (1910-1982) focuses on Abraham's highly personal relationship with the God of pure spirit. Like his previous book, Navigator of the Flood (1992), which retold the saga of Noah, this resonant psychospiritual ``novelized essay'' fuses storytelling, rabbinical lore, myth and modern psychological insight. Here, Abraham's ostensibly miserable marriage to narcissistic, sexually frigid Sarah produces in the Hebrew patriarch a mystical erotic rapture despite his wife's repeated rejections. Although Abraham is 99 years old and Sarah is 89, God miraculously restores her youth and beauty, leading to a tender and touching account of their ``holy embrace.'' Brelich also retells the story of Abraham's siring of Ishmael (considered the father of the Arabs) with the Egyptian servant woman Hagar, and of the near sacrifice of Isaac. While insightful, his narrative is sometimes almost inert as he digresses into dense theological speculation on the inscrutable ways of the divine will, as well as on original sin, evil, suffering and humanity's march toward enlightenment. (Nov.)