West's big international best seller. You can see its appeal - international subject matter, British lead, World War Two, sex, big issues. A terminally ill British priest is sent to a small Italian town to be devil's advocate in an investigation as to whether a man executed by commies in the war should be a saint.
The dead man was a British deserter - because when killing a sniper in Sicily he threw in a grenade, also killed a mum and baby. He roots a horny Italian woman, conceived a child, befriended a Jewish doctor, was lusted after by a richer hornier Italian woman... gets killed by the commies because he refused to leave the town. I mean the Commie partisan leader is reasonable, gives him a chance to go, says he wants to control the town and the Englishman hurts that... why not just go? Why be a matyr? He could just go away and come back? It didn't make sense to me. Maybe it did for Catholics.
I did enjoy the book. There's a different world - investigating whether to be a saint, but in post ww2 Italy. It poesn't shy away from the problems of the Catholic Church - the greed of the Vatican, the weird dogma, the poverty of the priests. Doesn't shy away from sex - the women want dick, there's an English painter character who is gay and grooming a kid basically (the son of the dead man)... and while he is Bad he's also given a speech that is quite sympathetic.
I kept thinking the final miracle would be the hero priest would recover, but no he dies. I didn't quite believe the dead man's conversion to God or why he didn't leave but the novel is thought provking and readable. It embraces all the contradictions of the church while then coming down on the side of God
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