The Bishop's Man

Hello again!

The first book I will be reading is The Bishop's Man by Linden MacIntyre. It is a Canadian Fiction #1 National Bestseller and won the Scotiabank Giller Prize and the Dartmouth Book Award for Fiction. So as you can see, these are the reasons it attracted me.
I'm doing my blog post early in the morning as unfortunately I am not able to commit to be a hermit as Niyousha is so courageously doing, as I am currently in the middle of moving. I won't have time to blog later in the day, so now seemed like the perfect opportunity.

I started reading The Bishop's Man at 5am this morning (August 1st) so as to not be disturbed by my chaotic family and am now a little more than halfway through. At first, I wasn't too keen on it, as it is about a priest named Duncan MacAskill in Nova Scotia who is sent to punish and break bad news to other priests who have broken the holy law of celibacy. Not only this, but he deals with the harsh reality of priests who are involved in sexual abuse towards children. I myself don't believe in god, but have no objection or disgust towards religion in any way. But being non-religious, the subject of the book wasn't one that particularly caught my interest.
This being said, the part that I was enjoying was the setting. The author described the wind swept fields and damp beaches of Nova Scotia with an authentic feeling of really having been there. It was my own country of Canada, and though I have never been to Nova Scotia, I felt myself become familiar with the places and phenomenons Linden MacIntyre was describing. The seasons changed just like they do here in Vancouver, which was coincidentally mentioned more than once, and the summers seemed to reflect the ones I remember.
It is well written and well planned out, but just a little bit slow for my liking. And as I said before, the subject isn't something I usually like to read about.
But as I progressed through the book, my opinion began to change. I began to feel emotions for the unique characters in the small town depicted, began to want to know what would happen next, and wanted to know who was behind and what triggered the suicide of a young boy. I especially felt towards the aging priest, Duncan MacAskill, who had just recently taken on a Parish for the first time, and was dealing with the ghosts of his past in Honduras as well as new temptations presenting themselves here and there. Some of the best parts in the books for me are when the author takes us back in time to the 1950's when Duncan was just a young boy, still deciding on whether to become a priest or not, and his romance with a young Latino belle named Jacinta. I watched him come to harsh realizations I had already suspected, and have yet to see him come full circle, as I still have a little less than half the book less.
My verdict so far is that it is not the BEST book I have ever read, but definitely worth picking up.

-Teghan :)