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A Perfectly Good Man

2012Patrick Gale

1.7/5

It’s almost possible to forget how wonderful Patrick Gale’s books are, because they aren’t showy or loud. This book has a wonderful structure, heading back and forth along the lifeline of Barnaby, a parish priest (Anglican, I think not, Catholic, because he is married with a family.) This results in an odd patchwork effect – you often find out someone’s fate before you actually meet them for real as they enter Barnaby’s life or leave it. This patchwork is mesmerising, gorgeous and very intriguing. I read it in less than 24 hours, ignoring various vital writery or family things I should have been doing instead…All the Patrick Gale books I’ve read so far have delicately described people and places (often Cornwall) but have also tackled large and hard to pin down concepts. Notes From An Exhibition was about creativity (and the cost of creativity); this book is about faith, where it springs from, and how it changes people and their lives. It is also about cruelty, deception and love, and it contains two of the cruellest things I’ve ever read in a book - a parent’s refusal to allow a child to grieve and a thief’s casual destruction of something precious – both of which happen almost quietly and unnoticed within the narrative, and yet are breathtaking in their inhumanity and believability. I loved this book. And I must not let myself forget, because of his quiet calm lack of melodrama, how much I love this writer. I must go and find another life of his to read.

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