Review: "Let There Be Light" by Liana Finck

Let There Be Light by Liana Finck
Published April 2022 via Random House
★★★★

And there was light.

In Let There Be Light, Finck reimagines the Old Testament with god as a woman—a childlike woman, prone to bouts of depression and rage, who falls for the wrong men and who allows men to think that god is, in fact, male. As you might expect, either from that description or the fact that this is the Old Testament reimagined...chaos ensues.

The art style is (as you might expect from a New Yorker cartoonist) very simple, with fine lines and very limited detail. It's not really to my tastes, but tongue-in-cheek retellings of the bible are, and this doesn't disappoint. For the sake of the graphic novel, not everything entirely lines up with the original, but it's consistent within itself, and very wryly funny.

So, like...don't read this if you're religious and don't have a sense of humour about it. It probably helps to have some familiarity with the Old Testament, but it's manageable even if your biblical history is, ah, shaky. But it's a lot of fun. For a number of reasons, I doubt Finck will tackle the New Testament, but if an author with a lusher illustration style—who also has a sense of humor—wanted to have a go, I'd be all over it.