After moving to a new parish in Ayrshire, Father David Anderton is attracted to Mark McNulty, a rebellious 15-year-old. He starts to spend many hours with Mark and his girlfriend Lisa, neglecting his parish and condoning the young people's drinking, drug-taking, stealing and vandalism. ( )

This was another RL book group read. It was picked because the blurb intrigued us: Was it about a gay priest, and the spectre of sexual abuse or not.

Unfortunately the book didn't really have much umph. The writing was vague and just didn't draw you in with the setting the characters, or the story.

The POV, David Anderton, is a priest that has just been posted to a small rural Scottish parish. He is Scottish himself, but only by birth. He lived and was educated in England, so he is considered an outsider. Catholics are not really welcome and with his education and tastes (wine, music) he is considered posh as well. Those around him are working class, coarse and products of a popular culture he has used the priesthood to avoid. He has trouble adjusting to the place and its routine and how those under him have been able to do what they want.

Unfortunately he is also having a mid-life crisis. He has lost or never had faith, and he is missing the life he was never allowed to have. Family, lovers, friends all the connections that we take for granted, he is fascinated by. He has incongruent exchanges with his feisty housekeeper, and he ends up being sucked in by two teenage delinquents he is supposed to be mentoring.

Rather than being the adult or the positive role model, he becomes one of them, by allowing their swearing, stealing, drinking, drugging, and general escape from responsibility and conformity. He insulates himself from real life, and is unable to pull himself away from them. While spending time with them, he is skipping his work, and going through the motions of his life and responsibilities.

David is also constantly thinking about the man he loved and lost (death) as a young man in College back in the 60s. It seems that he may have joined the priesthood to deal with his loss and his broken heart. He has also perhaps joined it because he is unable to deal with his homosexuality, and the fuss (1960) it would cause in the neat and tidy world he inhabits with his mother. He is trying to preserve his dignity, and may have given up his passion to do it.

Of course he can only repress himself so long, and when he is plied with drink and drugs by a 15 year old boy, he slips. Publicity and a circus ensues.

Interesting ideas and questions, but just not well executed for me. The last part of the book was better than the beginning. I just never felt the attraction that David did with the kids. He also had a good honest relationship with his mother, who had money. She would have supported him in both ways if he had wanted to give up the priesthood and re-design his life.

At least if was short. ( )

Affecting, ambiguous, deeply unsettling, thoughtful and sad, 'Be Near Me' manages to resolve to a conclusion optimistic and somehow cathartic - quite a trick to pull given the intensity, charge and sheer impropriety of the subject matter. Set in a highly polarised, xenophobic yet in other ways tight- knit Scottish community, we follow the trials of a Catholic outsider priest as he attempts to integrate and engage with his charge. While observing those around him and in turn being perceived (often with harsh cynism & cruelty) he starts to ruminate on his own life viewed through a newly introspective lens, questioning how religion, family & experiences have led him to this remote hamlet. Instrumental in sparking this enlightenment are a trio of teenagers with whom he becomes dangerously and unprofessionally involved, living vicariously through their experiences as a proxy for a youth that he never truly enjoyed. The housekeeper to the manse he calls home wields a moral foil and acts as intellectual sparring partner as our priest starts to question his beliefs and lose his ethical bearings.

This is a tremendously well-written novel that engages on many levels - we question and ponder issues of guilt, morality, memory, grief, compassion and redemption as the arcs resolve, so that by the end as readers we are left satisfied yet deeply affected. Highly recommended. ( )

Oxford-educated, middle-aged Father David starts working as a parish priest in a small Scottish town, not quite realising how much he is seen as an outsider. Eventually, the unlikely friendship he develops with a couple of young misfits results in devastating consequences. I enjoyed the writing, how the story kept moving between the past and the present. ( )

Be Near Me is Andrew O'Hagan's third novel, and his finest work to date, solidifying his position as one of the greatest writers of our day. The man could not write an ungraceful sentence if he tried, and is always a supreme pleasure to read, whether he is writing about an English priest, an anorexic child singing sensation, or the United States Republican National Convention. This is the story of an English priest, Father David, who moves to Scotland during middle life to take over the parish of Dalgarnock. He has a difficult time fitting in with most of the townspeople, but two teenagers, Mark and Lisa, seem to accept him. The result of his closeness with these youths is a horrible scandal, and the experience causes Father David to reflect back on his life – his childhood in Lancashire , the turmoil of a 1960s Oxford , his past love.

Father David's story begins in 2004, when he has been in Dalgarnock for several months. He seems to live a quietly composed life, cultured but solitary, with his housekeeper Mrs. Poole as his primary source of companionship. Mrs. Poole is uneducated, but a self-taught lifelong learner who takes adult education French classes. Father David's mother describes her as, “a heroine from Jane Austen: she would have distinguished herself in any class, yet her circumstances acted upon her like a series of privations she was determined to overcome.” Mrs. Poole believes that her conversations with Father David expand her horizons and enable her to practice the things she has learned. They both enjoy bantering with each other.

When he isn't working at the church, Father David teaches at St. Andrews :

“I took the chance to talk about Pugin and William Byrd to the senior students. They seem to enjoy it well enough, so long as you let them drink their foul fizzy drinks throughout the lesson and didn't give them homework.”

In one of his classes, Father David meets Mark McNulty and Lisa Nolan. They talk trash and act tough, but the priest sees something inexplicable in them. And it is Father David's desire to “embrace their carelessness” that is his downfall. He grows closer to them initially at Lisa's sister's wedding, at which he presides. They approach him and try to shock him by getting him to hold condoms. They seem amused at trying to disturb his composure, and seem to appreciate his informal candor. After this, they sometimes stop by the rectory to awaken him by throwing rocks at his window, drawing the somnolent Father David out to nighttime chats in the nearby housing estate or at the swings in the park. Father David learns more about the youths through these encounters:

“…they often smelled of glue and spoke to me as if I were a natural enemy of authority. They spoke of stolen money and home-made cider and air pistols. They went out joyriding in stolen cars at night whilst pretending to sleep over with friends. Over the months, I began to known worse things about them, how little they cared about life, how dehumanized they could be, yet I know I did nothing to oppose them. I gave in to every aspect of them, every aspect of myself. I watched them as one might watch people in a film, because he was beautiful, because I liked how they seemed to think of me.”

Father David continues to balance his growing casual relationship with Mark and Lisa with the responsibilities of his parish – teaching, giving sermons, visiting parishioners, still trying to fit into the Scottish parish, but struggling because of his separateness. It seems as if the only people he can be close to are Mark and Lisa and Mrs. Poole, who reveals that she has cancer and is counting on the Father to treat her no differently.

One evening, after another occasion of Father David playing sidekick to Mark's pranks, they return to the rectory alone and have some wine at Mark's insistence. Mark combines the wine with half a pill, and it is in this hazy, early morning hour that Father David oversteps his closeness with Mark – much to Mrs. Poole's surprise when she enters the rectory.

Mrs. Poole finds Father David “repulsive,” and perhaps feels a bit spurned. While she is absorbing her discovery, Father David hosts a dinner party for fellow priests and teachers. The group talks politics rather than religion – or perhaps more aptly, as is these days, in conjunction with religion – and this gives O'Hagan the opportunity to display his insights into American politics and the war in Iraq (he reported from the Republican National Convention in 2003).

Eventually Mrs. Poole shares her knowledge, and Dalgarnock seethes with rage and hysteria. Father David is removed from his post, and the rectory is trashed, rendering it unsafe to live in. As Father David deals with the consequences of his actions, he reflects back on his life – the turmoil and heady excitement of Oxford in the 60s, his lost love Conor, his relationship with his father, his tattered faith.

Throughout the story, O'Hagan plays with themes of closeness and estrangement, tying in with the novel's simple yet descriptive title – Be Near Me. It is perhaps Father David's desire for, and fear of, closeness that leads him to his sin with Mark. It is the scandal that truly shows who will endure to remain near to him in spite of his transgressions.

This is appalling subject matter, and it is to O'Hagan's credit that he handles it with such sensitivity. His writing is gorgeous, horrifying, poignant, and insightful, as he delves into Father David's past and present to attempt to understand his behavior. The writing in this novel simply cannot be denied, and it is the reason why the 2006 Man Booker Prize should have been awarded to Andrew O'Hagan!

A deeply touching story, beautifully written. A young English priest is accused of molesting a troubled boy he has been trying to help. He does not defend himself with any of the perceived vigour that an innocent man might. This tears it for everyone in the Scottish town he's been assigned to. But he is willing to suffer the presumptions and consequences for his own private reasons. The book is about loving and being honest about it. Powerful.
A Booker Prize winning novel. ( )

David Anderton is a connoisseur of fine food, wine and classical music. He attended Ampleforth public school, studied at Oxford University, and lived in Rome. His father died when he was younger, and his mother is a Morningside lady (a well-to-do area in Edinburgh) who writes novels. He is erudite, thoughtful and intelligent. David Anderton is a Catholic priest.

Father David is working in Dalgarnock, a fictitious town in Ayrshire, Scotland. Many of the parishioners are unemployed, having lost their manufacturing jobs as the local factories closed down. He has a comfortable rectory at St John Ogilvie, and is assisted by his housekeeper, Mrs Poole. Part of his role involves working with pupils at the local secondary school, St Andrew's, and it is here that he meets Mark and Lisa, who take an interest in Father David. A strange friendship grows between the three, as they exchange text messages, and start wandering at night, exploring the industrial estates and wastegrounds of Dalgarnock, where there is little for teenagers to do except numb the boredom with whatever mischief and substances they can find.

It has been claimed that the author has based his Dalgarnock on the real town of Girvan in Ayrshire, (see Sunday Herald article), but my sister and I disagree. We attended St Andrew's Academy (Saltcoats), where you can see the island of Ailsa Craig from the classrooms, we lived in Kilwinning (home of the Mother Lodge of the Orange Order, and an abbey) and in Stevenston (home of the Ardeer club, ICI factory, and the Blue Star garage, which is a name known to locals but not the one on the sign outside). The author has an authentic insider's knowledge of the Three Towns area, and describes it in detail. As teenagers in Stevenston, my sister and I had friends much like Mark and Lisa, and the author's portrayal of these aimless teenagers and the ways they pass their time definitely ring true.

Back to the plot though. It soon becomes apparent that Father David's friendship with Mark and Lisa is ill-advised, though he has been too naive to see this. Having spent a life distracted by art and wine and intellectualism (and a little religion), he is not equipped to recognise manipulation, or to consider how others perceive him and his actions.

Much is made in the book about the differences between Father David's life and the lives of his parishioners. The author writes in great detail about the family lives of Mrs Poole, and Mark, as though he has known people like these. I have known people like these. It is not that the author is simply using the other characters as a contrast to Father David. While social class could be argued as a factor in the way that the book's events are played out, I didn't believe that this was a book about class. For me, this is a heartbreaking and wonderful book about loss, regret and mourning of the path not taken.

Father David is written as a sympathetic character - naive, but essentially well-meaning. We learn about his student days at Oxford at the height of political activism in the 1960s, his friendship with the 'Marcellists', a group of Proust followers, and about the tragic events which lead him to decide to join the priesthood. The priest chooses faith in God as a safety net against the pain and loss of loving, and it is his gradual realisation of this I think, that makes the book so tragic. His relative lack of experience in close relationships leaves him vulnerable. This is a warm, thoughtful and true to life story, and would have received 5 stars if I hadn't been so upset at the end. ( )

I thought I would like this more than I did. How this priest became attracted to this group of unlikely, unlikeable, delinquent teenagers was not really well explained. ( )

Andrew O'Hagan's Booker longlisted Be Near Me is one of those novels stories where you can see disaster looming for the protagonist a long way off, and feel like shouting him a warning. (But would he have listened? Would he have cared?)

Like Zoe Heller's excellent Notes from a Scandal, the novel takes as its territory the human story behind familiar tabloid headlines (in this case screaming about a paedophile Roman Catholic priest).

Father David Anderton becomes the parish priest for Dalgarnock, a small town in Ayrshire, Scotland. He's a fish out of water (Oxford educated, middle-class) in a former industrial town with high-unemployment rates and sectarian divisions as clear-cut as those in Ulster, across the water.

He befriends a group of loutish teens from the local school, and becomes a de facto member of the gang, smoking dope, popping E's, drinking, hanging out. He is particularly drawn to a boy called Mark, whom he kisses (and no more) after a night on a bender. The boy tells his father who then blows the whistle, and soon the the whole community is baying for his blood.

I could appreciate O'Hagan's depiction of the teenagers, having taught classes just like this!:

"The pupils were waiting in World Religions. they hung over their desks as if they had just been dropped from a great height, looking like their limbs confounded them and their hair bothered them chewed the frayed ends of their sweaters in the style of caged animals attempting to escape their own quarters. They tended to wear uniform, though each pupil had customized it with badges and belts and sweatbands, you felt they had applied strict notions of themselves to the tying of their ties and the sticking up of their shirt collars. the small energies of disdain could be observed in all this, and the classroom fairly jingled with the sound of forbidden rings and bracelets."

David Anderton is a more difficult character to work out, since we are only gradually permitted to piece together his past. I didn't find him easy to sympathize with - he lacks conviction in his calling, he comes across as weak and ineffectual and simply to be going through the motions of running his parish.

It is a bit of a stretch that a parish priest should be so attracted to a group of yobbish teens that in some senses he seeks to emulate them, but O'Hagan does make the relationship seem credible ... and even inevitable.

Father David is attracted to the teenagers, and particularly to Mark, for their exuberance and their certainty (even when wrong-headed) and perhaps too for their sheer recklessness which contrast with his own lack of conviction and inertia. He clearly takes pleasure in experiencing life vicariously through them.

The title of the book is a line from Tennyson's In Memoriam and, as Hilary Mantel says, (reviewing the book in the Guardian) it is a prayer whispered by this celibate priest on all those lonely nights, still longing for the lover who was killed in a car accident decades before. It's a blow Father David hasn't recovered from. A sense of loss permeates the novel.

And the novel is a tragedy in the way a Shakespearian play is a tragedy - the ending is inevitable given the flawed character of the protagonist.

But if you enjoy the kind of contemporary British literary fiction which finds its way onto Booker shortlists and longlists, you should find the novel extremely rewarding.

I did enjoy it very much because I so admired O'Hagan's craft: he writes beautifully (although some reviewers have felt that he rather overwrites) and I relished the language. Scenes were so vividly rendered, that I was watching the movie in my head. (British. Arty. Slow.) I also really liked Mrs. Poole the housekeeper whom I felt was particularly well-drawn. ( )