A PRIVATE MAN

Based on the true story of the author’s grandparents, this intimate look at the marriage between a defrocked priest and a theology teacher takes place in 1960s England and 21st-century France.

Vatican II, convened in 1962 as the first such gathering in nearly 100 years, electrified young Roman Catholics around the world—even in largely Protestant England, where Catholic enclaves in the north still sent young men like David Fletcher to the priesthood. Meanwhile, some young women, like Margaret Bendelow, were selected to study a sort of theology-light in Rome, to fit them for teaching college girls at St. Genevieve’s. Margaret and David meet when he is assigned as her diocesan advisor, and sparks fly quickly, though chastely. Neither intends to start a love affair, but once it happens, it blows the roof off their lives. The story proceeds haltingly yet meaningfully, moving from their grandson Adrian’s discovery of this family secret, back to David’s early exhilaration with his vocation, to Margaret’s scholarly brilliance, on to Adrian caring for her through her difficult old age. Sometimes Margaret is able to share memories; sometimes she is lost to the fog of dementia. Connecting the elderly Margaret to her dynamic 30-something self is particularly difficult, a distancing that feels right given how little material Adrian and his mother, Hilary, have to explain Margaret’s past. It’s enough for the reader to see inside the grandparents’ marriage and its many challenges, which include ostracization, a poor sexual fit, and Hilary’s too-quick arrival; David and Margaret scarcely have time to unwrap wedding gifts before she’s pregnant. Sy-Quia wisely avoids tying up all loose ends, creating a portrait rather than a complicated plot. Although it’s clear from early on that David makes an important late request, without the rest of this restrained narrative, the significance of that request would mean very little. Instead, it explains everything.

A tender, surprising excavation of minds meeting and hearts singing through disappointments to very human deaths.