Heavy, heavy on Church politics, tons of descriptive padding—and just the ticket for a wide-eyed audience.
Tobin (The Wisdom of St. Patrick, not reviewed) speculates about what might happen when a conclave gathers in Rome to elect a new pope.
Timothy John Cardinal Mulrennan, Roman Catholic Archbishop for Newark, sees the late pope as a deeply spiritual man, perhaps a saint, even though many American Catholics, like Tim’s Christian folksinger sister, opposed his unyielding voice for a male-dominated church and against abortion. Cardinal Mulrennan flies to Rome on the same plane as devout billionaire philanthropist Frances Xavier Darragh, who has been nominated by Cardinal Henry Vennholme as a Gentleman of His Holiness, one of the highest papal honors a layman can receive. Darragh has his eye as well on becoming an overnight cardinal; after all, it’s happened to men of wealth and stature and good family in the past. He’s a key figure in the Evangelium Christi, an ultraconservative Catholic lay movement that Mulrennan has cold-shouldered for 40 years. Tobin’s retelling of Tim’s life as a priest packs in all the Catholic Church’s well-known schisms and events of the past four decades, then just for good measure gives Tim a brother who died in the Vietnam. As even the late pope knew, Mulrennan is not without sin, despite his superb gift for organizing church business while serving the pope in the Curia Romana. Darragh, though feeling unclean, has slipped a bribe to sleazy tabloid columnist Harry Benjamin to report on Mulrennan’s condoning his gay brother’s homosexuality, his (unconsummated?) affair with dazzling Rachel Séredi while bishop in Jackson City, Missouri, and his bedding of “foreign whores.” Now machinations within the conclave require that Mulrennan stand up and oppose those who would undermine the Holy See’s positions. With the original front-runner for new pope dead, who will be front-runner now?
Heavy, heavy on Church politics, tons of descriptive padding—and just the ticket for a wide-eyed audience.Pub Date: July 1, 2001
ISBN: 0-312-87352-2
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Forge
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 15, 2001
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
Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.
Hunter’s debut novel tracks the experiences of her family members during the Holocaust.
Sol and Nechuma Kurc, wealthy, cultured Jews in Radom, Poland, are successful shop owners; they and their grown children live a comfortable lifestyle. But that lifestyle is no protection against the onslaught of the Holocaust, which eventually scatters the members of the Kurc family among several continents. Genek, the oldest son, is exiled with his wife to a Siberian gulag. Halina, youngest of all the children, works to protect her family alongside her resistance-fighter husband. Addy, middle child, a composer and engineer before the war breaks out, leaves Europe on one of the last passenger ships, ending up thousands of miles away. Then, too, there are Mila and Felicia, Jakob and Bella, each with their own share of struggles—pain endured, horrors witnessed. Hunter conducted extensive research after learning that her grandfather (Addy in the book) survived the Holocaust. The research shows: her novel is thorough and precise in its details. It’s less precise in its language, however, which frequently relies on cliché. “You’ll get only one shot at this,” Halina thinks, enacting a plan to save her husband. “Don’t botch it.” Later, Genek, confronting a routine bit of paperwork, must decide whether or not to hide his Jewishness. “That form is a deal breaker,” he tells himself. “It’s life and death.” And: “They are low, it seems, on good fortune. And something tells him they’ll need it.” Worse than these stale phrases, though, are the moments when Hunter’s writing is entirely inadequate for the subject matter at hand. Genek, describing the gulag, calls the nearest town “a total shitscape.” This is a low point for Hunter’s writing; elsewhere in the novel, it’s stronger. Still, the characters remain flat and unknowable, while the novel itself is predictable. At this point, more than half a century’s worth of fiction and film has been inspired by the Holocaust—a weighty and imposing tradition. Hunter, it seems, hasn’t been able to break free from her dependence on it.
Too beholden to sentimentality and cliché, this novel fails to establish a uniquely realized perspective.Pub Date: Feb. 14, 2017
ISBN: 978-0-399-56308-9
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Nov. 21, 2016
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 1, 2016
BOOK TO SCREEN
© Copyright 2025 Kirkus Media LLC. All Rights Reserved.
Follow
Popular in this Genre
We can’t wait for you to join Kirkus!
It’s free and takes less than 10 seconds!
Already have an account? Log in.
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
Welcome Back!
OR
Sign in with GoogleTrouble signing in? Retrieve credentials.
