BR: Be Near Me (Andrew O'Hagan)

Amazon Link: Be Near Me

“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.

Be Near Me is a story of art and politics, love and change, and a book about the way we live now. Trapped in class hatreds, threatened by personal flaws, Father David begins to discover what happened to the ideals of his generation.”

Andrew O’Hagan crafts a real world, a seaside hamlet in the Scottish isles, and inhabits it with a flawed priest, a protagonist who I slowly grew to like, to respect, to understand. David, a fifty-something year old, spends a lot of time reflecting on the past, on his childhood, his mother (a successful romance writer who provided him with financial certainty but very little emotional support) and a present day world that makes little sense to him. He values books and fine wine, his love of the latter not enough to suggest alcoholism but more than that expected of a parish priest. In fact, many of his approaches to faith are out of sync with the expectations of his flock, his peers and mentors.

When the locals fail to accept him, some going so far as to threaten and curse him for being English, a pompous outsider who has no place on Scottish soil, he finds companionship with the only other outsiders in the small community – two young people, Mark and Lisa. The youth are fifteen years old, Lisa young and impetuous, overly emotional and taken to shifting loyalties when she doesn’t get her own way, and Mark, a self-absorbed hoodlum who seeks out David’s company in preference to people his own age. The friendship leads to trouble and revelations that I didn’t see coming, but in hindsight were always there.

“Troubles like mine begin, as they end, in a thousand places, but my year in that Scottish parish would serve to unlock everything. There is no other way of putting the matter. Dalgarnock seems now like the central place in a story I had known all along, as if each year and each quiet hour of my professional life had only been a preparation for the darkness of that town, where hope is like a harebell ringing at night.”

Initially I found the book to be slow, overly descriptive in setting and too full of characters and recollections. I continued to read even though it was a challenge to my concentration. Around a third of the way through, this changed. I went from reading because I had picked it up and the writing really was masterful, the author well respected and I felt it to be educational to keep reading… to enjoying and engaging and glowering each time I reached my station and had to put the book aside.

There were some aspects of the novel that I could not fully appreciate. For instance, David held a dinner party for his peers and over wine they discussed politics, war, America’s role in Iraq and the influences that shape modern Scotland. References were made to politics, religion, philosophy and I could only read as an observer, unable to engage in the narrative, unable to have a well developed opinion or to even understand some of the comparisons that were made. I felt uneducated, almost stupid, yet I realise I should not. Politics, religion and even philosophy interest me in a general sense, but not specifically. I tune out, I guess I’m like Mark in that respect, I absorb only that which is of personal relevance to me.

Overall, this is a book that deserves a second read (maybe even a third).

Rating: ***** out of five.

BR: Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde (Robert Louis Stevenson)

Amazon Link: Dr Jekyll and Mr Hyde
About the author: Robert Louis Stephenson

Much shorter story than I had imagined, and filled with more narrative than I had expected. Considering its era and the good/evil inner battle that wages in men, it is a masterful story. As any literary piece, it is heavy on description and light on action and dialogue. Not tedious, so much, but for a person such as I who is used to modern fiction, I found it enjoyable but not particularly gripping.

Also, I have become somewhat numbed to violence and so the murder was less vivid than I had expected. Again, considering the time that this was written, it did break new ground. We have become desensitised to violence, to a lot of things, in fiction and in all entertainment media.

The idea that a draught could be taken to wholly separate the good and evil personas within is a captivating concept. There is no denying that we all possess both aspects, and the entire separation is where the problem lies. After reading this story I worked through some online class notes which had a lot of insight about what the story meant, what each chapter/scene achieved, including the particular lack of women characters. Those that were included were portrayed as exceptionally weak. Of more interest was the examination of what might now be considered multiple personality disorder.

That Hyde eventually overtook Jekyll also has meaning. Does that mean that evil is more powerful than good? In the long run, it will overcome. Afterall, evil had to have overcome good in order for Jekyll to have done this to begin with.

A good read, and I am glad that I now that this story under my belt. I have heard about this since I was a child, and even called my father and uncle by this without understanding what I was saying. I thought they were two people -- maybe even a frankenstein type situation created by a mad scientist who was then forced to live with the monster he had created. In fact, the reality is more complex than that, and pleasing.