Deeply moving and personal, told with restraint and great skill.
A finely crafted story of a young priest’s crisis of faith (and love) is the latest success from novelist (and ex-priest) L’Heureux (Having Everything, 1999, etc.).
Anybody who was ordained in the 1960s faced pretty stiff casualty rates from the start, and Father LeBlanc—idealistic, intellectual, liberal, and more than a tad naive—is the sort who is bound to find Church life hard going at the best of times. Assigned as the curate to a large working-class parish in South Boston, he alienates his superiors (and not a few of his parishioners) by preaching and counseling against the Vietnam War, segregated schools, and the pope’s condemnation of birth control. Reassigned to a small parish in an out-of-the-way resort town in New Hampshire, he is forced to cultivate the virtue of solitude as well as humility. His pastor, Father Moriarity, is an invalid dying of Lou Gehrig’s disease, lovingly tended by Rose, the parish housekeeper. Rose’s teenaged daughter Mandy is somewhat wild in the manner of teenaged girls, and one day she overdoses on cocaine. Pronounced dead by the doctor, she regains consciousness after Rose prays over her. A miracle? Just good fortune? Father LeBlanc (who was present at the scene) is in no doubt whatever and becomes more and more obsessed with Rose, whom he believes to be a saint. Around the same time, Annaka (a somewhat disturbed woman from the parish) develops an obsession of her own—with Father LeBlanc. Eventually, Father LeBlanc gets himself into trouble with both Rose and Annaka, and the miracle turns out to be much more problematic than it first appeared. Father LeBlanc has to decide whether he should remain a priest—and what he wants to do if he leaves—and, more importantly, whether he still believes in God.
Deeply moving and personal, told with restraint and great skill.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2002
ISBN: 0-87113-857-3
Page Count: 240
Publisher: Atlantic Monthly
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 2002
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it...
Harris, creator of grand, symphonic thrillers from Fatherland (1992) to An Officer and a Spy (2014), scores with a chamber piece of a novel set in the Vatican in the days after a fictional pope dies.
Fictional, yes, but the nameless pontiff has a lot in common with our own Francis: he’s famously humble, shunning the lavish Apostolic Palace for a small apartment, and he is committed to leading a church that engages with the world and its problems. In the aftermath of his sudden death, rumors circulate about the pope’s intention to fire certain cardinals. At the center of the action is Cardinal Lomeli, Dean of the College of Cardinals, whose job it is to manage the conclave that will elect a new pope. He believes it is also his duty to uncover what the pope knew before he died because some of the cardinals in question are in the running to succeed him. “In the running” is an apt phrase because, as described by Harris, the papal conclave is the ultimate political backroom—albeit a room, the Sistine Chapel, covered with Michelangelo frescoes. Vying for the papal crown are an African cardinal whom many want to see as the first black pope, a press-savvy Canadian, an Italian arch-conservative (think Cardinal Scalia), and an Italian liberal who wants to continue the late pope’s campaign to modernize the church. The novel glories in the ancient rituals that constitute the election process while still grounding that process in the real world: the Sistine Chapel is fitted with jamming devices to thwart electronic eavesdropping, and the pressure to act quickly is increased because “rumours that the pope is dead are already trending on social media.”
An illuminating read for anyone interested in the inner workings of the Catholic Church; for prelate-fiction superfans, it is pure temptation.Pub Date: Nov. 22, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-451-49344-6
Page Count: 304
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 6, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2016
These letters from some important executive Down Below, to one of the junior devils here on earth, whose job is to corrupt mortals, are witty and written in a breezy style seldom found in religious literature. The author quotes Luther, who said: "The best way to drive out the devil, if he will not yield to texts of Scripture, is to jeer and flout him, for he cannot bear scorn." This the author does most successfully, for by presenting some of our modern and not-so-modern beliefs as emanating from the devil's headquarters, he succeeds in making his reader feel like an ass for ever having believed in such ideas. This kind of presentation gives the author a tremendous advantage over the reader, however, for the more timid reader may feel a sense of guilt after putting down this book. It is a clever book, and for the clever reader, rather than the too-earnest soul.
Pub Date: Jan. 1, 1942
ISBN: 0060652934
Page Count: 53
Publisher: Macmillan
Review Posted Online: Oct. 17, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 15, 1943
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