PATIENCE OF A SAINT

by Andrew M. Greeley ‧ RELEASE DATE: Jan. 14, 1986

Pumped up by the sheer exuberance of his prose and vision, Fr. Greeley scores another literary touchdown for the Lord in this extravagant, indulgent, crass, and richly entertaining seriocomic novel about a cocky Chicago columnist and the unbidden mystical experiences that wrench his life apart. Pulitzer Prize-winner Red Kane writes a searing column for The Herald Gazette He also drinks, smokes, swears, and cheats on his beautiful attorney wife, until, out of the blue, God ""hits him over the head with a cosmic baseball bat."" Kane's close encounter With a core of love beating at the heart of the universe changes him utterly. Exit the old, irascible Red Kane; enter the new: a caring husband, parent, and journalist, a man with the manner of a saint. At first this change augurs well: his wife falls back in love with him, he finishes his novel, he forgoes drink and smoke, and he successfully pursues an investigation into the snuff-slaying of a teen hooker 20 years earlier by a powerful Chicago poi, Harvard Princeton Gunther. Afraid of ridicule, Red speaks of his mystical encounter only to his brother-in-law, Fr. Blackie Ryan (hero of two previous Greeley mysteries), who directs him to literature on mysticism. Then the world suddenly sours: Gunther kills himself, and Red, who had just blown the whistle on him, is seen as a murderer. Red is fixed, shunned by his family, and placed under psychiatric observation. Hoping to regain his family by resurrecting the old Red Kane, Red readopts his nasty ways. Things improve--his wife apologizes, a publisher makes a bid on his novel--but just as he is convinced that the old Red must stay, there comes ""a swooshing noise"": God and his cosmic baseball bat are back. Although it suffers from the Greeley hallmark of a self-consciously naughty emphasis on shocking prose and sexual situations, this novel ultimately succeeds through its supercharged central character, prose so energetic it fairly bounces off the page, and the audacity of the central premise. As he again demonstrates here, Greeley knows how to make the pot boil.

Pub Date: Jan. 14, 1986

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Warner

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 1, 1986

Categories: FICTION