Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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50 of 53 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Spectacular, 16 Aug 2006
I've liked O'Hagan's writing ever since The Missing and have followed his progress with interest. This new book, which I read in two sittings, is less brutal and 'Scottish' than Our Fathers (I suppose it's more 'accessible,' whatever that means), is - at first glance - less pyrotechnical than Personality, and is by far his best work. There isn't a word out of place. The narrative is like a tightned string. The language and imagery are stunning - one review I read called him a prose poet, and I think that's right. But above all, the generosity of the writing, and the refusal to judge or condemn, are something that will stay with me for a long time. I haven't thought so much about a book for years: is O'Hagan's central character a sort of holy innocent, or deeply flawed, or a narcisstic monster, or just careless? I think he is probably all four. One of the strengths of the book is that it causes you to think deeply about subjects to which it is easy to have a knee-jerk response.
Be Near Me is about a priest, Father David, and about his relationships, including one with a 15-year-old boy. But that's to simplify things - really it's about the nature of love, faith, beauty, and morality. I couldn't recommend it highly enough. It is a stunning achievement.
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32 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An unfolding tragedy, with grace along the way, 26 April 2007
A moving story is at the heart of this book, but it is the portrayals of its main characters and their inter-actions which are its main strengths. The story concerns an English Roman Catholic priest, David Anderton, who moves to a parish in Scotland, where old sectarian tensions live on into the present day. Anderton experiences prejudice from his Protestant neighbours, but never quite connects with his own parishioners - hardly surprising in view of his love of old English roses and fine wines. The only successful relationship he maintains is with his house-keeper, Mrs Poole, and there is some fine dialogue in the chapters where their verbal sparring predominates, and where later they have to deal with difficult issues.
Anderton eventually extends his ministry among the local youth, and the writer captures the dangerous carelessness of the relationships that develop as Anderton moves into a world in which he could never participate without taking risk bordering on recklessness. The writer exactly describes how a lonely, almost isolated life can lead to the taking of any opportunities for human contact however dubious the company.
Indeed, Andrew O'Hagan has shown in David Anderton, the basic immaturity and childlikeness of many celibates. Anderton went to a Benedictine boarding school, then on to Oxford University and later seminary in Rome, and never had to deal with the challenges faced by those he had to minister too, his main interests being good food, wine and reading - hardly the staple interests of the working class Parish he was called to. When his housekeeper falls ill with cancer, it is the passages in which this is discussed which show Anderton's failings. His attempts to trivialise the illness and offer a spurious hope are rebuffed with words from Mrs Poole which would shame any priest. However, O'Hagan shows a huge amount of grace comes Anderton's way, mainly through his mother, his house-keeper and O'Hagan helps us see that no crime is quite as straightforward (or perhaps as dreadful) as it as first seems.
Several scenes have the quality of intense drama, as though the reader is watching a stage-play, the world around him momentarily silent as the action unfolds. The pace of the book is just right: periods of narrative are interspersed with reflective looks back on the life of David Anderton, which help illuminate the present dramas. The latter half of the book is like an accident waiting to happen: the reader knows where Anderton's path is leading him, and can him making the mistakes along the way which lead to the inevitable disaster.
The book is finely written and has the mark of quality. Anyone who likes good prose will enjoy reading it and feel at the end that the experience was well worth while.
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16 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Robbed of the Booker, 18 Sep 2006
This year's Booker shortlist must be pretty stunning it if could afford to ignore a novel this good. Then again, it seems that the criteria may have changed - Chair of the Judges, Hermione Lee, explained that 'names' like O'Hagan were absent because 'they don't need us'. Hang on - so this is no longer a prize for the best novel (wherever its place in an author's career), just a patronizing leg-up for the unfamilar? John Banville and Alan Hollinghurst hardly 'needed' the prize in that sense.
Anyway, this is a very fine piece of work. It grapples with 'ideas' (particularly the failure of socialist principles), but it's the emotional core of the book that hooks. Father David's incremental, unwitting seduction (by Mark? of Mark?) is painfully believable, snared by beauty and passion in a place where there is precious little of either. That's not to say that the intellectual drive of the novel is something quite separate: I take O'Hagan to be suggesting (a bit like Conrad) that in a world where so much is hopelessly 'irremediable', it's only at the most microscopic level - the offering of friendship - that one can hope to do good. This is not a failure of courage or ambition. O'Hagan is a master of character - even the most minor players are given full life in the space of a few lines of dialogue - and his writing has both dazzle and depth. I had him down for a journalist who wrote fiction on the side, but this puts him right up there with the best British novelists.
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