Ambitious and intelligent, but more a collection of fascinating essays than a fulfilling piece of fiction.
What would you do if the Virgin Mary came to visit for a week? Taking off from this entertaining premise, the author of In the Language of Love (1996) falls short, though not for want of trying.
The narrator, a fussy but endearing writer in her 40s who lives in some northern suburb, seems an unlikely candidate for divine visitation. But Mary, weary from constant miracle-making, nonetheless takes up temporary residence in her guest bedroom. Despite the casual slacks, brown cardigan, and sneakers, there is no doubt this is indeed the Mother of God. And although Mary requests complete secrecy, she realizes the writer will be too tempted (so to speak) by the material at hand and agrees to allow a book to be written about her so long as it's called a “novel.” Presumably, this is the result: a document of quiet mornings spent over coffee and the paper, trips to the mall, and other quotidian events. Anecdotes about Mary's previous earthly visitations and stories about saints and martyrs both familiar and obscure comprise much of the text; they illustrate the strength of belief and narrate the course of history from a Marian perspective. Schoemperlen also makes random forays into the narrator's memory, more often than not including discussions of Pythagorean theory, the nature of truth, the melding of history and fiction, and Heisenberg's uncertainty principle. Though these tidbits and occasionally endless lists speak to the narrator's larger examination of the nature of fact and faith, they ultimately prove frustrating. The Virgin Mary is sitting right there in the kitchen! Yet Schoemperlen dangles her in front of the reader for 300 pages without ever allowing Mary much to say for herself. The supposed core of the story, meeting the Mother of God, isn't strong enough to balance the tangents.
Ambitious and intelligent, but more a collection of fascinating essays than a fulfilling piece of fiction.Pub Date: May 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-670-89977-1
Page Count: 350
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 2001
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
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
BOOK TO SCREEN
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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