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Be Near Me de Andrew O'Hagan
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Be Near Me (original: 2006; edição: 2007)

de Andrew O'Hagan (Autor)

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5242346,048 (3.44)35
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"Always trust a stranger," said David's mother when he returned from Rome. "It's the people you know who let you down."Half a life later, David is Father Anderton, a Catholic priest with a small parish in Scotland. He befriends Mark and Lisa, rebellious local teenagers who live in a world he barely understands. Their company stirs memories of earlier happiness??his days at a Catholic school in Yorkshire, the student revolt in 1960s Oxford, and a choice he once made in the orange groves of Rome. But their friendship also ignites the suspicions and smoldering hatred of a town that resents strangers, and brings Father David to a reckoning with the gathered tensions of past and present.In this masterfully written novel, Andrew O'Hagan explores the emotional and moral contradictions of religious life in a faithless age.… (mais)

Membro:AminBoussif
Título:Be Near Me
Autores:Andrew O'Hagan (Autor)
Informação:Harcourt (2007), Edition: 1, 320 pages
Coleções:Sua biblioteca
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Be Near Me de Andrew O'Hagan (2006)

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Mostrando 1-5 de 23 (seguinte | mostrar todas)
I couldn't get into this book and finally started skimming it. I didn't like this book ... also didn't find it particularly credible that the priest would befriend hoodlums. ( )
  ellink | Jan 22, 2024 |
"In this masterfully written novel, Andrew O’Hagan explores the emotional and moral contradictions of religious life in a faithless age." NOT EVEN REMOTELY.

I left the last three chapters unread. I never did this before: getting to the end and not finishing the book. It was desperation. In theory, the book had all the elements which make a good novel for me: religion, small town, first person narrator, and the writing was good. But the actual novel is the fake version of all these things.

What bothered me most was that it promised to talk about religion, humility, and patience. I guess this was one of the points which the author tried to convey, but I didn't like it, and I wish I'd been warned that the priest in this story has nothing to do with religion. ( )
  AminBoussif | Sep 22, 2021 |
I'll start with a positive - this book is incredibly well written. It flows, the prose is beautiful, the story is well-layered and develops at a steady pace. It is insightful, clever and deals with the subject matter in a non-sensationalist and balanced way.

Which is why it pained me to give it such a low rating...but I just can't see past the glaring flaw in this book. And that flaw is that it just wouldn't happen. Teenagers like Mark and Lisa wouldn't hang about with David in the way portrayed (use and take advantage of, yes, but not socialise), and someone like David (no matter how lonely he was or how deep his mid life crisis went) wouldn't have allowed himself to be in such a position with them. Their worlds were just too far apart, their ages too far apart...I just couldn't suspend my disbelief enough to engage with the story. That stopped this being a great read, in my opinion.

And don't even get me (native Scot) started on the anti-English stuff. Again, the author made it too extreme and trashed the believability. ( )
  SadieBabie | Jun 23, 2018 |
This was a bit of a long slo-mo train wreck. Middle-aged Oxford educated Catholic priest moves to a depressed Scottish parish and becomes drawn by a crowd of teenage toughs, one youth in particular. Predictable events ensue. What stands out however, is the writing - certain passages just beg to be copied down in my journal - and the priest's relationship with his housekeeper - proof that O'Hagen can create a really interesting female character. ( )
  laurenbufferd | Nov 14, 2016 |
I haven't yet finished this book but it's impossible for me to believe that it could end in any other way than one that would warrant 5 stars. I am completely convinced that any 'deficiencies' in the book are in my reading and understanding, rather than O'Hagan's writing. This is a deceptive book, in that you can read it superficially and think it's only so-so, and largely a discussion of working class poverty in Scotland, but the reality is, I believe, far from that. The very few occasions I looked a little further into the text revealed to me a much more subtle and deep meaning than I had gained from my initial reading. I suspect if I was a better read and better educated person, I would have appreciated the work even more than the 5-stars-worth that it has already been given. Even in my ignorance, I found it deeply moving and powerful, with direct relevance to my own life and people I know in a corner of the world very distant from that Scottish town. ( )
  oldblack | Mar 10, 2016 |
Mostrando 1-5 de 23 (seguinte | mostrar todas)
Is it possible to review a book without regard to its content? To treat only of its literary merits - the prose, the characterisation, the plot - and not their ramifications? If so, then Be Near Me is a fine novel, well written. The prose is fluid and consciously literary, if a little over florid in a few places, and the characters are well enough observed.

A more or less English Catholic Priest, David Anderton, comes to a small Ayrshire parish where he is regarded with suspicion as an incomer. Only his part-time housekeeper, Mrs Poole, and two fifteen year old parishioners called Mark and Lisa make any effort to see him as an individual and not an interloper. The remainder of the book, interspersed with flashbacks of Anderton’s childhood and his life as a student, when he had a boyfriend who died in a car crash, an event which precipitated his retreat into the priesthood, deals with the unravelling of these latter relationships.

I may be wearing my teacher’s hat here but from its inception Anderton’s relationship with the teenagers was ill-advised and implied trouble. His response to the views they express - and the language they used - on their first meeting during a school lesson was inadequate at best, diffident and lacking in the moral guidance you might expect from an educator - or a cleric.

O’Hagan intends this of course. Anderton’s confused and ineffective response in this early encounter is emblematic of his attitude to his ministry and to the crisis that later engulfs him. He seems lost and insecure, but wilfully - and frustratingly - so. As a portrait of a man unable to prevent, indeed intent on, his own ignominy Be Near Me is exemplary.

This review could finish here were it not for the caveat expressed in its first sentence. Potential readers of the novel unwilling to have their reactions possibly prejudiced should also stop here.

THERE IS A MAJOR PLOT SPOILER IN WHAT FOLLOWS.

As O’Hagan has reservations about the treatment of Roman Catholicism’s adherents in Scotland - which admittedly not all of his co-denominationalists necessarily share - I hesitate to write this; but I found his subject matter troubling. Or, rather, the way in which it was approached.

He has Anderton remember his school at Ampleforth and mention tales of abuse by the Brothers but say he neither witnessed nor suffered any himself. Is there a hint of disingenuousness here; is this too dismissive of the issue?

Later Anderton reveals himself as guilty of what is essentially a sexual assault (even if a minor one) on Mark. That his “victim” is nearly of the age of consent and that the act was not followed through neither excuses nor expiates it.

Yes, Be Near Me has things to say about jumping to conclusions, mob rule and vigilantism, the tabloid tendency to simplify complex matters and the failure of an adversarial justice system to penetrate to the truth of things.

But it comes close to implying that such abuse didn’t happen or, if it did, was relatively inconsequential; misunderstood even.

I am not saying that one ought not to write about paedophiles, nor that they may not be considered sympathetically in fiction, only that, if they are, it should be with due care and attention to their victims and to its seriousness; and in this I think O’Hagan fails, which is an extremely severe defect. In his choice of narrator and in the age of that character’s “victim” O’Hagan seems to be skating round the issue rather than confronting it. Minimising it, if you will. And is that not reprehensible?

Notwithstanding this objection, however, whatever else Be Near Me does as a novel, it made me reflect on these matters. And, in the end, to promote such reflections is one of serious fiction’s functions.
adicionado por jackdeighton | editarA Son oF The Rock, Jack Deighton (Feb 18, 2010)
 
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Fiction. Literature. HTML:

"Always trust a stranger," said David's mother when he returned from Rome. "It's the people you know who let you down."Half a life later, David is Father Anderton, a Catholic priest with a small parish in Scotland. He befriends Mark and Lisa, rebellious local teenagers who live in a world he barely understands. Their company stirs memories of earlier happiness??his days at a Catholic school in Yorkshire, the student revolt in 1960s Oxford, and a choice he once made in the orange groves of Rome. But their friendship also ignites the suspicions and smoldering hatred of a town that resents strangers, and brings Father David to a reckoning with the gathered tensions of past and present.In this masterfully written novel, Andrew O'Hagan explores the emotional and moral contradictions of religious life in a faithless age.

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