Planned to read this before we went to Croatia, at which point my kindle rejected the card.
No pun intended, since it is primarily about a priest, this is a bit of a curates egg of a book. Possibly for the same reasons as 634 above. Gale is a wonderful writer, but I found the time and character shifts in this disorienting and bits of it completely lost narrative pace (particularly the last chapter, where Barnaby reverts to being 16 and discovers God in the company of his parents and uncle (who all remained a bit obscure to me whenever they appeared)).
What I had forgotten is that bits of this book are a sequel to ‘Notes from an Exhibition’ (621) and that Morweena and her father reappear, Morweena as the lover and latterly civil partner of Barnaby’s daughter Jessie. The character of Modest Carlsson is also well done – Gale doesn’t normally do evil but this man has plenty of it and the underlying banality.
Worth a re-read.
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