Faith and Folly
“Each man has his own way of betraying himself.” (Andrew O’Hagan, Be Near Me)
After having met and come away suitably impressed with Scottish writers Andrew O’Hagan and James Meek at the 10th annual Blue Metropolis International Literary Festival in Montreal, I resolved to read and report on at least one book from each.
The first is O’Hagan’s Be Near Me, long-listed for the prestigious Man Booker Prize. It is the story of David Anderton, an English priest who is assigned to a small, close-minded parish in Scotland reeling from post-industrial blues. It is a bad fit. He ministers to his flock and to his own inner whisperings imperfectly. An ill-advised and inappropriate friendship with two teenagers sets the wick alight in this tinderbox of human emotion.
The storyline is not riveting and only a few of the characters are compelling enough to create lasting empathy. But the writing is superb and I have read few books that do such a thorough job of analyzing the human condition. Consider the following insights:
· Stupid children are always aware of their rights…They share a belief in the supreme relevance of what they think themselves and wield these opinions like home-made weapons in the war against self-improvement.
· There are people who notice the power of themselves in any conversation. They won’t be put down, and their steady gaze can come to bare one’s nerves and cancel one’s resolve.
· The optics of our social perspective makes every grade of society seem the best to him who occupies it.
· I think in our hearts that we believe that beauty is a very sincere kind of knowledge; we fall for the wisdom of beautiful lips no matter what they are capable of saying.
· I have risked many things…the person sitting here is the sum of their failures.
In sum, Be Near Me is a beautifully-written tale of love, loneliness and, for those who thrive on it, just a soupçon of self-loathing.
