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Reviews

Publishers Weekly review -
"This 1927 novel by Bernanos (1888- 1948), newly translated by Whitehouse, centers on a priest with a soul-searing dilemma. Father Cenabre, member of the Parisian theological illuminati, the brilliant author of celebrated texts on mysticism, is a cool, even arrogant defender of the need to live a Christian life in a secular world. When he confronts Monsieur Pernichon, a priest manqu who writes a religious column in a radical paper, Pernichon is at first appreciative of the critique (as Parisians who come in contact with Cenabre tend to be), but soon recoils under Cenabre's heartless, relentless X-ray scrutiny. Shortly afterward, Cenabre discovers that he has lost his faith. Sustaining his public image, he shares this realization only with an aging, humble cleric named Chevance, who poses no threat in competition for the Parisian limelight, and for whom Cnabre finds a place in the diocese of Paris after a profane exorcism Chevance performs in the provinces goes awry. What follows may best be termed a religious detective story as Cenabre and Chevance search for Cenabre's missing soul. Traversing the intellectual minefields of Cenabre's present and the sometimes harrowing alleyways of his past, Bernanos runs his plot on two clocks. The surprising resolution centers around the question of to whom the dying Chevance should entrust the pure flame of a young female parishioner. Austere, intellectually challenging and, occasionally, achingly poignant in the tradition of French-Catholic mysticism, the novel achieves a certain quiet spiritual triumph, a faith-at-low-ebb form made popular in the English-speaking world by The Power and the Glory." FYI: J.C. Whitehouse is the author of The Human Being in the Catholic Novels of Graham Greene.

Library Journal review -
"Perhaps it's because Father Cenabre has just gone through another wearying round of confessions with Monsieur Pernichon. Perhaps it's because he has spent years in study and writing without having arrived at a palatable system of ideas. But one gloomy night the good father comes to a terrible realization: he no longer believes. It hardly helps to summon meek Father Chevance for discussion, and trying to do violence to himself doesn't work either, so Father Cenabre sets out on a much more desperate course of action and in his self-serving despair brings down a host of people with him. An early work by a distinguished 20th-century French novelist and his last to be translated into English, this is a novel of ideas featuring a hardened, arrogant man whose predicament doesn't necessarily provoke sympathy. Penetrating if slow-moving, the text winds itself out over 250 pages without a single chapter break. Serious readers will be rewarded, however. Mostly for academic collections."

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• 2009 Year of the Priest > Year of the Priest Books > Literature / Fiction Books
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