Be Near Me
From the author of the Sunday Times bestseller Caledonian Road
-
-
4.5 • 2 Ratings
-
-
- $12.99
Publisher Description
From the bestselling author of Mayflies and Caledonian Road
** Order Andrew O'Hagan's now novel Caledonian Road now **
'There is no page on which there is not something surprising or quotable or pleasurable of thought-provoking.' Hilary Mantel
'One of the few truly essential works of fiction to emerge from this country during the past 20 years or more.' John Burnside, Daily Telegraph
Longlisted for the Booker Prize, Be Near Me is a brilliantly moving story of art and politics, love and change, and the way we live now.
When an English priest takes over a small Scottish parish, not everyone is ready to accept him. He makes friends with two local youths, Mark and Lisa, and clashes with a world he can barely understand. The town seems to grow darker each night. Fate comes calling, and before the summer is out Father David's quiet life is the focus of public hysteria.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
This burnished gem of a novel has drama, emotional resonance and intellectual power enough to recall one's favorite 19th century writers. At its center is David Anderton, a Scottish-born, Oxford-educated Catholic priest who, after years in England, assumes a parish in working-class Scotland to be closer to his mother, a writer and free spirit. Now in his 50s, David recalls his own passions vividly, but he has traded his 1960s university ideals to favor the Iraq war, and his realizations of romantic love for a life of the cloth. From early on, there's a glaring gap between David's first-person recollections and the elitist, alienating affectations he assumes with others. His Dalgarnock parishioners are suspicious of his education; his only companions are his sardonic but morally stringent housekeeper, Mrs. Poole, and a pair of thuggish teenagers, Mark and Lisa, who remind him of his own youthful rebellions. As Mark and Lisa draw David into their chaotic lives, the novel builds to an inevitable clash between the spiritual and the secular, the adult and adolescent, the utopian 1960s and the neoconservative 2000s. Throughout, O'Hagan (The Missing) enchants with his effortless prose, vivid characters and David's uncanny asides, making O'Hagan's fourth novel a heartrending tour de force.
