Rating: 4/5
Review:
Good but flawed
Thomas Keneally is a very fine writer and I was expecting
this to be excellent. It was good in
many ways, but as a novel I had my reservations about it.
Keneally is from a Catholic family and this is his take on
priestly abuse of children (which he states clearly that he never suffered
personally, by the way) and the Church's response to it. Set in 1996, we meet Father Frank Docherty
who is returning to Sydney after
being sent away by a previous Cardinal for his political views and his refusal
to accept orthodoxy uncritically. He has
remained a priest and also become a psychologist and academic in Canada,
working on child abuse in the Church. On
his return he becomes embroiled in old abuse cases and we see him wrestling
with matters of conscience, honesty, care for victims and so on and how those
involved respond. All this is very well
done; these parts of the book make an involving, readable story and Keneally
shows his typical intelligently insightful examination of his characters and
the moral issues involved.
However, interspersed with this we also get a lot of
history: how Frank developed into the man he is; the youthful spiritual
struggle of one of the people affected; a good deal of discussion of the
Church's attitudes to celibacy, birth control and sexuality generally and so
on. For me, although it's important
stuff, here its effect was to water down and interfere with the crucial central
story and its subject, so the book became something of a slog in some
sections. As things reach a head, the
narrative becomes very gripping – although I did think that the outcomes were a
little too conveniently neat to quite ring true.
I have rounded 3.5 stars up to 4 because it's very well
written and has some important things to say, but I can only give this a
somewhat qualified recommendation.
(I received an ARC via Netgalley.)
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