The Bishop's Man

⭐⭐⭐⭐⭐
A book that I loved, an absolute must read, and now a favorite of mine. It's a book that will live on my shelves forever and I would re-read in the future. I would pick up anything else by this author without question. This book is now one of my all-time favorites,

I don't even know what to say about this book except that I couldn't put it down. I didn't want it to end but I just had to find out what happened.

The only downside to me was how much the story hopped around. I would have like to have it unfold in a more solid linear fashion.

It's a story that put me through a lot of emotions. Although it's a work of fiction it made me think that things like this go on inside organizations religious and otherwise. At times it got me thinking about how strong my own faith was.

It touches on secrets, miscommunication, loneliness, sorrow, temptation, hopelessness, disgust, and other difficult human emotions and parts of life.

A sad but moving journey.

I read The Bishop's Man just after Pope Francis's visit to the USA. The author writes about a priest, who's known as the enforcer within the church, as he deals with those priests who've been caught in a sexual scandal or in some other illicit activity. He is often called by the bishop, who counsels him to look the other way from time to time. The fact that he's asked to participate in cover-ups and attempted cover-ups plays heavily on his mind. He has his own secrets that are hard to bear and the environment he's asked to work in, a small fishing settlement near his childhood home in Nova Scotia, adds to his turmoil

This novel won the Scotiabank Giller Prize in 2009. I was further intrigued by the structure of the book. Told largely in dialogue, the author succeeds in showing the internal struggles of a man who tries to do the right thing, despite the pull of his superiors.