An Unusual Read

I've just been reading an unusual novel. Called A Perfectly Good Man, it's a new novel (published this year) by Patrick Gale and it tells the story of a parish priest in Cornwall. That was the reason I picked it off the bookshelf in Ripon's Little Bookshop. It appeared to be about rural parish life in a mining community which is gradually losing its mining industry.  In fact, it's about much more than that. The narrative is very ingenious, moving through time, but not always chronologically, telling the story from the perspective of different characters at different stages of their lives over a whole life span. As I read, I reflected that this is the way parish priests who stay awhile come to know their communities - they come to understand the different view point of each generation and also how things that have happened a long time in the past shape the future for good or ill and mean that certain relationships are bound to be special whilst others will always struggle to thrive.

The book is about the life and ministry of a very ordinary priest and his family. While revealing to us something of the inner joys and struggles of life in a clergy household, it also deals with the ways in which our birth families shape how we relate to spouses, children and those with whom our children make relationships. It shows what being a partly public figure throughout a lifetime does to family relationships for good and ill and it explores faithfulness, doubt, duty and that illusive sense of transcendence pervading the ordinary.

At one level this is a book about the faithful but unexciting life of a priest and yet it deals with themes which bring us to the edge of some of the greatest and deepest dramas of life and death. This is its brilliance - Gale somehow manages to show what difference a perfectly ordinary priest can make in the tangle of human life. Sometimes his actions make very little difference, occasionally his actions or his presence make a great deal of difference, sometimes the very little he does (maybe simply praying) make all the world of difference. Every priest will identify with this. And this unexceptional man encounters on his way still birth, adoption of a child from another culture, the suicide of a disabled person, illegitimacy, political action, drug abuse, disinheritance, retirement, bereavement, civil marriage, his own arrest, media pressure and issues to do with the way in which people with criminal records and inadequacies look to the local church for support and inclusion.

The delight of the book is that each character contributes to our understanding of the community and of the priest's ministry - it is not priest-centric. We also see how prayer and the intangible things that priests do are of value - a value that many will never appreciate but, nevertheless, at the heart of a life lived with and for God. We see how the sharing of brief moments of gentle or profound spiritual insight help to shape the lives of some of the people he encounters as well as his own life.

It is a book about a human father and son, their relationship, their deepening knowledge of one another and their suffering. It is a book about God and His relationship with all  human life, our deepening knowledge of God through the heights and depths of our existence and the way God both withdraws and meets us in our suffering. But you could just read it as simply a story about people finding their way towards truth and a priest who doesn't think he is achieving much. The book is, at the same time, both modest and profound.

A Perfectly Good Man Patrick Gale, Fourth Estate, Harper Collins 2012.

Two Good Reads

This year, the sheer luxury of relaxation offered by those glorious after Christmas days has been emphasised by snow and fog. Apart from venturing out to the odd service or party, to collect logs from the garage and to wander along the Ripon canal at twilight in the still crisp snow, the best thing to do has undoubtedly been to stay in and read infront of the fire. For the first time since coming to Yorkshire, we didn't even make the St Stephen's day pilgrimage to Fountains Abbey due to 'flu and chest infections in the family.

So I have finished two really good reads in the last three days. Infact, I think one of them was quite the most remarkable novel I have read in a long time. Lisa Genova's Still Alice  is the story of a Havard professor of cognitive psychology and linguistics who discovers she has early onset Alzheimer's Disease, aged fifty. The novel is a quite brilliant evocation of the slow progress into forgetfulness and disorientation which detatches her from her career (which is at its height), her support networks, her family and even heself. Yet it is not unremittingly depressing. As well as giving the reader some insight into the fear and the increasing sense of confusion felt by those who suffer from dementia, it shows how relationships can continue to change and even to blossom through the early stages of the disease. Alice, the central character, finds that she can increasingly communicate most profoundly with the daughter she has never before got on with. The reason they have continually argued is that Alice is an academic who is intellectually ambitious for her daughter while Lydia, the daughter, wants more than anything to be an actor and is impatient with the notion of studying, theoretically, what she can do in practice. As Alice's grasp on complexity diminishes and her ability to read begins to desert her, she and her daughter find that they can communicate through talking about how character and emotion are developed in the plays her daughter is  in. A long time ago, a geriatrician I knew whose mother had dementia advised me that mood was they key to communication with dementia sufferers. The content of conversations becomes less and less important while picking up on mood and atmosphere and either joining in or purposefully changing them becomes the key to conversation. Alice becomes expert at picking up the atmosphere of an exchange and uses this ability to encourage Lydia as she studies her parts.

The book is choc full of tiny insights into the impact of Alzheimers on both the sufferer and their family but it is written unapologetically entirely from the view point of the person living with the disease. There is humour and hope and a sense that life changes but remains precious as the disease progresses. Probably one of the most chilling aspects of the book is the way it depicts how dementia sufferers become invisible and voiceless. From the colleagues who ingnore her and become embarrassed in her presence early on, to the doctors and family members who discuss her in her hearing later on, and the social worker who is funded to run a support group for care-givers but not for the sufferers themselves, the reader catches a glimpse of what it is like to begin to disappear. Alice manages to capitalize on the transition period where she has the disease but retains some insight and comunication skills in order to deliver a speech at a conference on Dementia showing what the disease is like for the sufferer. I suspect that few sufferers who had not been former university professors would have the support structures to make this kind of thing possible. The poignancy of her achievement in doing this is that she will only remember the contribution she has made and the feeling of restored confidence it has given her for the duration of the day on which it happened.

The second excellent read I have enjoyed is Juliet Barker's  The Brontes which is a biography of the whole family. Barker's thesis is that the individual Brontes can only be understood when studied in the context of the whole family unit and she has used previously untapped sources to provide a more rounded and (in Mr Bronte and Branwell's cases, a more sympathetic) protrait of family members than the usual hagiography of Charlotte, Emily and Anne at the expense of others in their tight knit circle. She also gives some very interesting insights into the vicinity of Haworth and Bradford in the early to mid nineteenth century and the life and work of a conscientious parish priest in the north of England. Patrick Bronte was extremely faithful in his care of his parishioners throughout his own repeated bereavements and personal worries and it is interesting to read the unexpectedly liberal and far sighted views he held on many social issues. He remained, to the end of his life, a true evangelical yet he accommodated the various theological and spiritual outlooks of his own family with realism and compassion. I had not previously grasped the extent to which Emily lived almost entirely in her own world without demonstrating much empathy for those around her. Home bird she might have been, but this was more about home giving her the space to be independently and unashamedly herself than about concern or sympathy for the others. Charlotte did her (and us) a dreadful disservice in destroying her second novel or the parts of it she left. Charlotte could be amazingly negative and critical of those around her and one wonders whether she over estimated the degree to which Emily's work would have added to mid Victorian prudishness and distaste over the Bronte legacy. Well worth a read, whether you are familiar with the Brontes or not.

The Churchyard at Haworth

Still Alice   Lisa Genova,  Simon and Schuster UK Ltd 2009


The Brontes  Juliet Barker,  Abacus 2010 (first published in the UK by Weidenfield & Nicholson 2004)

Both on Amazon

Cities of Sanctuary

Sheffield, Huddersfield, Hull, Bradford, Leicester, Bristol, Swansea, Leeds...what do all these cities have in common? They are 'Cities of Sanctuary'. Cities of Sanctuary is a movement to create a culture of hospitality in towns and cities across Britain for those seeking asylum. These places commit to becoming places of safety and welcome for people who have fled persecution and terror in their own countries. Have you ever told someone you thought you could trust something in confidence only to find that it has been used to harm you? For many asylum seekers this kind of experience where the harm escalates into violence and deprivation for themselves and members of their family has been an everyday occurrence. A book that tells the story of two women - one British and the other fleeeing persecution - and gives a glimpse of the way that asylum seekers may experience their 'welcome' to the UK  is the Other Hand by Chris Cleave, Spectre 2008. It's an unusual and gripping story - certainly one you'll never forget once you have read it.

City of Sanctuary is a volunteer-led, grassroots movement which encompasses a network of clubs, charities, businesses, individuals and faith groups. To find out more, visit www.cityofsanctuary.org/ and read about what has happened in several cities. There's also a blog spot which you can access through the site where you can read the stories of asylum seekers. Very moving and interesting.  Leeds is just becoming a city of sanctuary....what about Ripon? There are towns invloved, too.

PS. I've just tried the link I've given you and it's not responding very well. If you can't activate it, try putting 'Sheffield city of sanctuary' into your search engine and it will take you to the site. Sheffield was the first such city. Links that don't work have to be high on my list of 'don't likes'!