An interesting but finally disappointing look at a priest grappling with women and guilt.
In 1970s New York, a young priest agonizes over his surrender to temptations of the flesh.
Monda (Do You Believe? 2007, etc.) is an Italian writer who lives in New York City. A few references—building the World Trade Center towers, Mayor Abraham Beame, Studio 54, the Foreman-Ali fight in Zaire—give a glancing idea of the city and the time when this book is set. The story concerns a brief period in the life of the narrator, a recently ordained Catholic priest who has embarked, never mind the vow of chastity, on an affair. He also deals with parish business, hears confession, and delivers homilies. A subplot involving an anonymous accusatory letter tries to add suspense, as does the priest’s discovering a lump on his lover’s breast. The slim novel often toggles between his trysts and the post-coital tristesse of his solitary inquisitions into why unshaken faith coexists with unslakable appetites. Monda’s treatment of a morally and theologically complex area, however sincerely expressed by his priest, is somewhat scattershot and fraught with overworked pathos. The cleric’s guilt-ridden internal keening becomes a sort of liturgy he repeatedly performs in the sanctuary of his tormented mind, a dark Mass of the soul served with a lot of whine. It is possible, though, to admire the economy of conscience with which he melds the sins of lying, lust, and larceny when he says he is going out to see his mother before going off to buy his lover something with money stolen from the collection plate.
An interesting but finally disappointing look at a priest grappling with women and guilt.Pub Date: May 22, 2018
ISBN: 978-0-385-54294-4
Page Count: 192
Publisher: Nan A. Talese
Review Posted Online: March 4, 2018
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 15, 2018
A modern day fable, with modern implications in a deceiving simplicity, by the author of Dickens. Dali and Others (Reynal & Hitchcock, p. 138), whose critical brilliance is well adapted to this type of satire. This tells of the revolt on a farm, against humans, when the pigs take over the intellectual superiority, training the horses, cows, sheep, etc., into acknowledging their greatness. The first hints come with the reading out of a pig who instigated the building of a windmill, so that the electric power would be theirs, the idea taken over by Napoleon who becomes topman with no maybes about it. Napoleon trains the young puppies to be his guards, dickers with humans, gradually instigates a reign of terror, and breaks the final commandment against any animal walking on two legs. The old faithful followers find themselves no better off for food and work than they were when man ruled them, learn their final disgrace when they see Napoleon and Squealer carousing with their enemies... A basic statement of the evils of dictatorship in that it not only corrupts the leaders, but deadens the intelligence and awareness of those led so that tyranny is inevitable. Mr. Orwell's animals exist in their own right, with a narrative as individual as it is apt in political parody.
Pub Date: Aug. 26, 1946
ISBN: 0452277507
Page Count: 114
Publisher: Harcourt, Brace
Review Posted Online: Nov. 2, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 1, 1946
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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