Unlike the protagonists in so much recent fiction, Emanuel is never a victim but an acute observer of human nature,...
Blecher’s second and final novel, written when he was 27, two years before his death in 1936, tells the obviously autobiographical story of a young Romanian man’s experience after he is diagnosed with Pott’s disease, a tuberculosis of the spine.
Emanuel, who has been studying chemistry in Paris, is “terrified” and “bewildered” when he gets his medical diagnosis. His doctors, portrayed as decent, kind men, send him to a sanatorium at Berck-sur-Mer. With a dreamlike sense of detail, Blecher describes Emanuel’s adjustment to his new life. Placed inside a body cast, Emanuel feels he has joined a new world of “not being ‘fully alive.’ ” He debates whether to become resigned to his situation, what his doctor describes as cicatrisation, the growing insensitivity as emotional scar tissue forms. Although Emanuel experiences melancholy he finds he almost enjoys his new idleness. He also finds plenty of friendship, romance and drama within the closed society of the sanatorium where emotions are as often heightened as they are dulled by physical limitations. He witnesses the complexity of the patients’ reactions to their illness. Some die, some recover, some who recover physically remain permanently scarred emotionally. Soon Emanuel is passionately involved with Solange, a former patient still living in the town—once cured, many find it difficult to return to their old lives. Emanuel drives a horse-drawn stretcher trolley into the countryside (a photo on the book’s back cover shows a handsome, young Blecher in such a carriage beside an unnamed woman) where he and Solange dine at inns and have sexual interludes near the sea. But Solange’s devotion, which he has fostered, becomes an irritation. He escapes her and the sanatorium by moving into a villa on the beach. When he finally has his cast removed, he has life-affirming casual sex with an Irish woman, then travels to Switzerland.
Unlike the protagonists in so much recent fiction, Emanuel is never a victim but an acute observer of human nature, including his own.Pub Date: Oct. 30, 2008
ISBN: 978-1-905-847-18-1
Page Count: 228
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 15, 2008
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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