It’s impossible for me to review this novel without providing SPOILERS, so read at your own peril.
Rural Ireland, 1957. Detective St. John Strafford (with an R) has been summoned to a country estate in the south-east of Ireland, where a Catholic priest has been found dead in the house of a Protestant land owner. The real kicker: the priest has been castrated. It’s December and the countryside is cloaked in a thick blanket of snow that chokes out sound and hides evidence. Under the cynical and domineering eye of the Catholic Church, Straffort investigates who could have wanted the priest dead.
I’m not a huge fan of Banville; his acclaimed novel The Sea, to me, at times, read like a pastiche on the kind of book it was supposed to be. The main character was an insufferable art dealer and the only female character of note mainly acts as a prop for the protagonist. I’m sure I missed something there – it’s been a few years since I’ve read it, and it got great reviews – but I wasn’t eager to try his work again.
But here’s my conundrum: I love crime fiction but there’s nothing to take the joy out of reading like a degree in English lit, so when one of the greats deigns to dabble in the genre, I take what I can get. This time, I was not disappointed. Banville avoids obvious pitfalls, deftly paints characters (women still get the short shrift somewhat, but baby steps) and manages to render people and locations with effective, deft brush strokes that come from decades of experience.
The interesting – and frustrating – aspect of this novel is that, for once, we’re way ahead of the main character. I doubt you’ll find many people who are completely unaware of all the shenanigans the Catholic Church has gotten up to, particularly in Ireland, so when we as a modern-day audience read that a Priest, known for his jovial and convivial attitude, has been found with his genitalia missing, our mind immediately leaps to places where Strafford’s doesn’t go. To him, the obvious is unthinkable, particularly because he himself is a protestant. The priest’s abuse is an open secret, known by all and discussed by none; they unsubtly hint at the rumours, but they never spell them out enough for Strafford to either understand them, or take them seriously. It’s baffling and probably historically accurate.
At some point in the novel, though, the perspective briefly switches to that of the murdered priest, and we read about his time in a correctional facility for young delinquents: heaven to a pedophile. There are chilling descriptions of the abuse of a nine year old child that sent a shiver down my spine, not because of how graphic they are, but because Banville is a very effective writer. It’s a short chapter but it rivals Lolita in the way portrays pedophilia. The priest doesn’t apologise for his actions, not really: he veers between ‘it was inescapable’ and ‘it was just beautiful.’ Not much shocks me anymore, but this did the trick. It’s been a few days and I still can’t stop thinking about it.
The novel isn’t so much a whodunnit or even a whydunnit, but it does show the chokehold of the Church on a secretive society that an outsider simply can’t understand. There’s a coda to the novel that, reading between the lines, signals the perpetuity of the problem decades after the original murder. It’s sad, it’s chiling, it’s infuriating, and it’s sadly very real.