Japanese writer Endo (The Final Martyrs, 1994, etc.) continues his exploration of faith and anomie—in a deceptively simple and well-told story of spiritual inquiry that movingly explores all the big questions. The opening pages briefly introduce four people who will shortly, for varying reasons, join a Japanese tour-group travelling to India: Isobe, a businessman whose deceased wife, believing she would ``be reborn somewhere in this world,'' made him promise he would look for her; Mitsuko, a volunteer at the dead woman's hospital, who is troubled by her own past and her obsession with a former classmate; retired industrialist Kiguchi, still haunted by wartime memories of Burma's notorious Highway of Death; and Numanda, a gentle writer of children's books who wants to repay his debt to the bird that saved his life when he was desperately ill. The book investigates the role religion plays in contemporary Japan, where relatives attending a funeral politely question the Buddhist priest conducting the service, while ``not one of them really believed anything the priest was saying.'' As the trip gets under way, more disquiets are explored: Isobe can't forget how he ignored his wife when she was alive; Mitsuko hungers for love but can't abandon her cynicism; Kiguchi recalls a fellow veteran who saved his life by eating human flesh but then drank himself to death trying to forget what he had done; and Numanda muses on the central role nature has played in his life. The four finally experience their epiphanies on the banks of the Ganges at Varanasi, where the old and afflicted come to die and the faithful immerse themselves in the river. In this richly detailed setting, Endo offers a faith that, using the river as metaphor, comfortingly blends all the great religions together. Conflicts a bit too neatly resolved, but saved from mawkishness by strong and original characters.
Pub Date: April 1, 1995
ISBN: 0-8112-1289-0
Page Count: 224
Publisher: New Directions
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1995
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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