Be Near Me

Be Near Me

by Andrew O ' Hagan (Author)

Synopsis

"Always trust a stranger," said David's mother when he returned from Rome. "It's the people you know who let you down."Half a life later, David is Father Anderton, a Catholic priest with a small parish in Scotland. He befriends Mark and Lisa, rebellious local teenagers who live in a world he barely understands. Their company stirs memories of earlier happiness--his days at a Catholic school in Yorkshire, the student revolt in 1960s Oxford, and a choice he once made in the orange groves of Rome. But their friendship also ignites the suspicions and smoldering hatred of a town that resents strangers, and brings Father David to a reckoning with the gathered tensions of past and present.In this masterfully written novel, Andrew O'Hagan explores the emotional and moral contradictions of religious life in a faithless age.

$21.56

Quantity

20+ in stock

More Information

Format: Paperback
Pages: 305
Edition: Reprint
Publisher: Mariner Books
Published: 14 Apr 2008

ISBN 10: 0156033968
ISBN 13: 9780156033961

Media Reviews
An exquisitely written portrait of ambiguity in a time that is much blighted with intolerance. This novel pushes black and white aside and insists on a diligent and unwavering examination of grey. . . . O'Hagan is a formidable and witty stylist who never puts a foot wrong. . . . . [A] profound book.
-- Globe and Mail

This burnished gem of a novel has drama, emotional resonance and intellectual power enough to recall one's favorite 19th-century writers. . . . Throughout O'Hagan enchants with his effortless prose, vivid characters and David's uncanny asides . . . a heartrending tour de force.
-- Publishers Weekly (starred review)
With Be Near Me, O'Hagan has weaved an intricate, complex tale that encourages us to take a close look at the inner workings of desire, art and religion.
--Montreal Gazette
It is hard to imagine a better, more beautiful novel being published this year.
-- The Spectator
Be Near Me is an elegy, a love story, a document of an era, beautifully imagined and composed.
--Joyce Carol Oates
What a fine novel is Be Near Me.
--Norman Mailer
A generous, wonderfully observed novel, and the best O'Hagan has written yet; it is alsoone of the few truly essential works of fiction to emerge from this country during the past 20 years or more.
-- The Telegraph

Andrew O'Hagan proves himself an original prose stylist, a lord of the language. . . . Incantatory.
-- Wall Street Journal
O'Hagan makes the heavy light, the ugly near to lovely through an unusual combination of language, poetic in its imagery on the one hand and ruthlessly sharp and contemporary in idiom on the other.
-- Spectator

From the Hardcover edition.


PRAISE FOR BE NEAR ME


[A] beautiful, astute novel. Grade: A-. Entertainment Weekly

[O'Hagan is a] novelist of astonishingly assured gifts. The New York Times Book Review


PRAISE FOR BE NEAR ME


[A] beautiful, astute novel. Grade: A-. Entertainment Weekly

[O'Hagan is a] novelist of astonishingly assured gifts. The New York Times Book Review


PRAISE FOR BE NEAR ME


[A] beautiful, astute novel. Grade: A-. --Entertainment Weekly

[O'Hagan is a] novelist of astonishingly assured gifts. --The New York Times Book Review