Naivety And Cunning In The Sistine Chapel

On the face of it a lot of elderly clerics trying to decide who should become their next leader does not seem like promising material for a thriller. But from the first page this novel about the election of a new pope is utterly gripping. What Harris does so cleverly is exploit the conflict between the cardinals' purported humility and their covert, or sometimes overt, ambition, the gap between their spirituality and their worldliness, their naivety and their cunning.

In essence this is a political thriller, despite is religious setting. Taking place against a backdrop of terrorism, corruption and the resonance of the sexual abuse scandals of the last decade, and driven by the contrasting characters of the key players, the papal conclave quickly resolves itself into a battle between two different visions of the Catholic church – liberal or conservative as one by one champions emerge from the pack and one by one their past mistakes rise up to haunt them.

Hugely enjoyable, full of twists and turns but ultimately all about the personalities, this is one of my favourite books of 2016. I simply could not put it down.

Literature Of Squalor

A deeply unpleasant story about a young woman in America in the nineteen sixties working in a young offenders institute. Her mother is dead. Her father is an alcoholic ex-policeman. Her home life is one of unmitigated squalor. Filled with disgust for her own body, she hates her life and everyone in it. Her only pleasures are consuming laxatives and stalking one of the guards at the prison where she works.

When a new, glamorous woman comes to work at the prison, Eileen becomes infatuated and for the first time, she has a friend. The intensity of that friendship culminates in a senseless act of violence.

Repetitive, misogynistic (Can a female writer be misogynistic? On the evidence of this novel I'd say, yes) full of clumsy foreshadowing of the 'if only I'd known' type, the novel's structure consists simply of a long, slow build up to a sudden hurried climax.

This novel made the Booker Prize short list which depresses but doesn't surprise me. I want the time back that I wasted on it.