This is classic Murdoch stuff with the complex wrestling with identities that are at the edge of acceptable norms and exploring relationships, particularly between parents and their adult children - which here is mostly a destructive formation.
There is real dram, however there is a bit too much tidying up in the final chapters - I have often found this with Murdoch and have on occasion left her books a little from the end while they remain juicily unresolved - as it is the tension and ambiguity that give her writing its power.
In this novel a key part of the plot is a pseudo-sexual relationship between a catholic priest and an adolescent (whether he is a boy or a young man is not clear but he is whatever he physical age immature in the context of the relationship) which is in some ways divorced from the abuse scandals that have recently come to light in the Catholic Church. The way Murdoch writes Cato (the priest), he is a victim - of circumstance and perhaps a weakness of character but whatever it is he has fallen foul of we are not to blame him and hardly even to pity him - this is problematic as his relationship with Joe (the adolescent) has to modern eyes all the hallmarks of sexual grooming. But this uncomfortable place I think has significant merits - it gives us a insight in to how things happened, things we now see as unbelievable mistakes of the highest order, it doesn't make things right but it does make them intelligible.
No comments:
Post a Comment