Customer Reviews

Be Near Me

5 star:		(12)
4 star:		(6)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(2)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I am taking my time only because the other reviewer (there is only one so far), was so far off the mark, in giving
the book only three (or 3.5, as she claims in her review), that I want to remedy her review. This is a terrific
book. The writing is beautiful--not lah-dee-dah beautiful, but strong and thoughtful--and the characterizations
are splendid. I believed utterly in the conflicted priest, in his dying, snobbish, decent housekeeper, and most
of all I believed in the ghastly beast that the Scottish town became.

If you are a reader of highly literate material, I recommend this. If you like your novels more obvious,
skip it. (But you will be missing a fine book).

Andrew O'Hagan's "Be Near Me" is a work of indescribable beauty. From the opening dialogue that David Anderton (Father David) has with his mother to the final pages, a wistful thirty years later, O'Hagan elicits some of the finest characterizations and dialogue I have read.

This is a story about distance and loss. David, an Oxford student, falls in love with Conor, a young man from another college. After a certain kiss with Conor, David knows where he his headed...the priesthood. As it turns out, that's one of the few pieces of knowledge David will carry with him.

Much of the book centers around Father David's time in the Scottish town of Dalgarnock many years later, where he is not exactly welcomed by all. He meets an adolescent couple, younger than their years, befriends them, takes them on trips and becomes their confidante. After falling for Mark, the male of this duo, David is drawn into him one night and an indiscretion occurs. A trial follows and the rest is left for the reader to witness.

"Be Near Me", like the fine wine David drinks, simply gets better with each passing chapter. O'Hagan's narrative is so good that I found it hard to leave his book for even a minute. Each character evokes a certain empathy...not an easy task with multiple principals. By telling a Catholic priest's story from within, O'Hagan captures the "other side" of what we so often miss in the headlines of abuse. It is the choice of not facing one's sexuality that often draws men into the priesthood coupled with the ensuing loneliness that tortures its victims. The author presents this side with pathos and tenderness.

I highly recommend "Be Near Me" as it is a compelling work and one of the best books of the year. O'Hagan has created a masterpiece and the reader will understand the joys and sorrows of each of the individuals portrayed. It is a tour de force, full of emotion, depth and care.

Be Near Me is a searing read and paints a vivid portrait of an idealistic priest battling his inner demons. The Catholic priest in question, Oxford-educated David Anderton, finds himself heading the parish of a small town, Dalgarnock, and is met with suspicion by the townspeople. He befriends two troubled teens, Mark & Lisa & this friendship leads Anderton on a dangerous path that causes him to confront his past demons whilst struggling to deal with the consequences of his present actions.

Though the stories of sexual misdeeds in the church is not uncommon in these present times, the author succeeds in making other themes in the novel strike a more resonant chord within readers. Themes such as devotion, friendship, love, even ethics are given due consideration and the character of the priest arouses one's sympathy, despite his failings. A well-written novel that enables us to gain an insightful perspective of the central characters' lives.

Generally speaking, I mostly read mystery novels. Literary mystery novels to be sure, but mystery novels nonetheless.
While this book is certainly no whodunit, in a sense, this novel deals with a greater mystery: How shall a middle aged Catholic priest deal with the perils of doubting his long held faith, and how does he cope with his long surpressed temporal desires.
In a lesser hand, this book would have been pedestrian effort. In this author's hands, this ouvre is a small treasure.
Grab it, read it, savor it, and then wait for Andrew O'Hagan's next book!

What a beautifully written book. When Catholic priest David Anderton is posted to a small, clannish village in Scotland, his erudition and cultured ways are off-putting to most of the adults, with the notable exception of his cleaning woman and verbal sparring partner, Mrs. Poole. When he is drawn into the orbit of a couple of misfit teenagers, it is she who warns him that no good will come of it. David's past spills into most chapters seamlessly and we get a picture of his youth, his seminary experience and his Oxford days even as the present events unfold into personal disaster and the worst accusation a priest can face. What could have been a cliché, however, is not. When David realizes that his choices in life have left him totally alone and that the past and its grief cannot be forgotten, he accepts responsibility for his actions with total honesty and morality. The grief from which he can never heal is the great love he shared at Oxford with a fellow student - and his ruminations on love are particularly luminous (in O'Hagan's hands):
"...the heart will always have the last word, and when the word is love we can recognize, we can respond, we can submit and we can try to ignore, but we can never choose. Love is not a matter of choice but an obdurate fact of surrender."

Father David's mother is also a wonderfully drawn character - full of a steadfast and undemonstrative mother's love and good advice. The author's gift in leading the reader past distaste and condemnation of the protagonist's actions through the character's own search for self-understanding is quite an accomplishment, but it seems almost effortless.

O'Hagan does the difficult--incisively probes the psyche of a character who is extremely intelligent but has little insight of himself. With the current slew of priestly sexual misadventures, O'Hagan evinces the person behind the media sensation. Matters of sexual identity, race and social class are presented with a fine touch. There is one section of the novel, bearing its title, where I had to put the book down because the prose was so beautiful it took my breath away. I highly recommend this book

Be Near Me is beautifully written, moving, and eloquent novel of what it means to be human. O'Hagan traces the life of a man who is seeking himself, the conflicts between his love of God and his love of earthly pleasures. It's one of the finest novels I've read in years.

"Truth is stranger than fiction" is a well-known dictum--but fiction (good fiction) has a powerful way of getting at the essence of life anyway, and is therefore sometimes even "truer to life" than anything factual. This certainly seems to be true of this very strange and haunting book, Be Near Me. The author tells a story that surpasses the "light of common day", and comes close to the realm of dream, poetry, image and reflection that is both moving and uncomfortable. I couldn't wait to see what happens at the same time as dreading what might happen because of its dark and almost surreal undertow. Admittedly, I know little of the life of Catholic priests, the Catholic church in general, the privileges of an Oxford education, and probably even less about delinquent teenagers in a remote town in Scotland, but somehow the coming together of these unlikely elements in the life of a man it is easy to like, nay, even love, is an extraordinary accomplishment. There are no villains and there are no saints; just a continuing mix of what it takes for any human being to get by, from one day to the next, given their situation. I found myself wanting to say that these things couldn't happen--but I think it was more a question of not WANTING to see that, yes, life is this messy and passionate and mean and careless and glorious and sacred! Andrew O'Hagan has woven a masterful tale in mesmerizing language that nevertheless keeps very close to the simple truth.

This book was a splendid surprise. I bought it on the recommendation of "Paperback Row" in The New York Times.
O'Hagan's depiction of the priest, David Anderton, is absolutely amazing, especially considering the fact that the character's date of birth is 1947, and O'Hagan was born in 1968. O'Hagan really gets the feeling of middle-age, and his lines on getting "gray"(p.51 in the paperback edition) are right on target.
The novel, written in the first person, totally bares the soul of the main character, despite his own difficulties seeing himself.
I recommend the book highly.

"Be Near Me" is clearly the best novel so far written by up-and-coming Scottish author Andrew O'Hagan. Like most of his works so far, the book revolves around the themes of (Catholic) religion, nationality in the UK, alcoholism, the failure of the 1960s left-wing revolt movement, and the difficulties of memory.

These topics are woven together in a first-person portrayal of the downfall of a Catholic priest after he moves from Lancashire to a small town in Scotland. The combined effects of his uncertainty about his religious calling, the hostility of the local population towards outsiders and the temptation of a local boy overcome his weak resistance towards being swept away. Impressionable as he is, the memory of his flight into the priesthood and the impact of his sudden love for the boy (who has only a teenager's fleeting interest in him and mostly just likes attention) slide him over the edge of his self-control and send him into a freefall.

What makes the book remarkable is that despite the rather harrowing theme of an uncaring and not understanding public's overly hostile response to a really rather innocent (if flawed) aesthete, the writing style is very simple and calm. This internal tranquility's contrast with the events around him reinforces the way the protagonist clearly does not entirely understand his world any more than the average people around him understand him. But it also lends the book a serene quality that makes it memorable beyond being just a novel on the theme of a 'current event', despite the clear references to the American 'scandal' of boy-loving bishops.

Despite the book's gay themes, this work shouldn't really be considered a 'gay novel' in the traditional sense, and there is little eroticism in it. Rather, it involves a story of the failure of a sympathetic but flawed man to understand the rules and workings of the 'real world'. For this reason, recommended to a wide public.