Father of Lies: A Novel (Hardcover)

~ (Author) "When I first met him, Eldon Fochs was a thirty-eight-year-old accountant as well as lay provost for the largely conservative religious sect the corporation of..." (more)
Key Phrases: Rector Bates, Provost Fochs, Father of Lies (more...)

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

It's not easy to tell in this psychological chiller whether Provost Eldon Fochs is a recipient of the devil's attention or a criminal psychopath with delusions. In the end, it doesn't matter. Evenson's disturbing first novel addresses what he calls "a problem common in a wide range of religions." That is, a church leadership that exploits the ambiguity of religious phraseology and its own assumed purity to shield corruption. The highest authorities of the Church of the Blood of the Lamb are well aware that one of their provosts is committing sexual crimes against children. When psychotherapist Alexander Feshtig, whose clinical account of Fochs's "disturbances" open the book, attempts to bring the provost to justice, he discovers what it means to go up against a self-righteous organization. So do the mothers of the victimized children. Through alternating first-person chapters, Fochs emerges as a man with no remorse and a narcissistic thirst for demeaning others. Yet rather than being censured by his church, he's protected. He's even included on a committee sitting in judgment of him, because he's presumed innocent and therefore eligible. All the while, a strange man known to the reader only as Bloody Head makes all the right things happen for him in return for certain loathsome favors. Evenson's allegory of blind religious obedience is a shocking account of a predator expert in the "soul murder" of the vulnerable, a villain who relies on the church to abet his crimes. Given Evenson's well-publicized expulsion from the faculty of Brigham Young University (after the publication of his 1994 story collection, Altmann's Tongue), his scary fictional treatment of church hypocrisy has the feeling of a reasoned attack on blind religious obedience.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Product Description

Delivered with cold precision, "Father of Lies" is the haunting tale of a violent pedophile who is supported by the church, even after his crimes become known. Brian Evenson holds the reader to the page until the novel's fateful end.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 197 pages
• Publisher: Four Walls Eight Windows (September 1998)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1568581165
• ISBN-13: 978-1568581163
• Product Dimensions: 8.6 x 5.8 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 12.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (9 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #979,651 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Call David Lynch now!, December 23, 1998

By	[e-mail] (Portland, OR) - See all my reviews

In Father of Lies, Brian Evenson has at once crafted a straight-ahead thriller (somewhat contrary to his reputation as an experimentalist) and also crawls into your psyche with a mood that reminded me of that weird Jacob's Ladder movie. I could see someone like David Lynch making a creepy movie out of this. It sucked me in and was a quick, entertaining read with serious undertones.

1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A fascinating fictional exposé, November 23, 1998

By	David Seiter - See all my reviews

As a scathing indictment of institutional corruption that transcends its religious milieu to comment on well-meaning but powerful ideological organizations generally, Father of Lies is timely and desperately needed.

Though murder, pederasty, and multiple personalities could have made for a gripping psychological thriller, Evenson wisely avoids the genre's overworked trappings with odd details and fresh turns of event that make the novel as memorable as it is disturbing.

Evenson's adept point-of-view shifts and experiments in form and psychic distance demonstrate a technical proficiency that allows him to alternately take readers deep inside the twisted mind of his protagonist, then back out for relieving breathers.

In the end, a quick, sobering, and worthwhile read.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Ad hominem, ad hominem, ad hominem, February 4, 2001

By	Volkswagen Blues "cead1" - See all my reviews

My experience of this novel was more than colored by the fact that I paid close attention to Evenson's professorial career in the immediate wake of the publication of his fine and controversial collection of short stories, "Altmann's Tongue" (for which he was practically hounded into leaving the university at which he was then teaching). "Father of Lies" is, among other things, a pretty clear and pretty ad hominem attack on certain members of the administration at a certain private and religious university in Utah, and I think that the novel pulls up a bit short due to its unbridled bitterness (even if it's fun to match psychotic characters with their real-life near-namesakes, as one might do when reading, say, "Primary Colors" by Anonymous). Some reviewers have admired the anger evident in the prose; I think it whittled characters down to fewer dimensions than are needed in what sets out to be a critique of the abuse of power in religious communities.

"Father of Lies" is really well-plotted and I was unable to put it down once I started reading. Despite the reservations I mentioned above, it really is an engrossing read; the tension builds nicely and climaxes well, if a bit brutally (but we expect no less from an author unafraid of disturbing his audience, in the tradition of Kafka). My biggest worry is that certain aspects of the novel make it difficult to accept as a functional critique in the manner that Evenson's foreward implies. Doesn't the criminal protagonist's explicit emotional disturbance and psychological imbalance provide him with a reason, if not a full excuse, for behaving as abominably as he does? I would have bought the critique of Fochs' actions more wholeheartedly were he depicted as having a choice or any authority at all over them. His madness decides, though, and not he.

If details like this don't bother you, though, you're in for a harrowing and exciting read. But if you really want to discover Evenson at his finest, buy "Altmann's Tongue" or "Contagion" (which has his O. Henry-winner "The Brothers" in it).