A USA Today Best Spiritual Book of the Century.

Bernanos is one of the greatest Catholic writers of the 20th Century and this book, winner of the 1936 Grand-Prix of the French Academy, is widely recognised as his masterpiece. A tale of a young, seemingly inept, parish priest in a remote French village, this is indeed a remarkable novel but not necessarily an enjoyable one. Difficult is what it certainly is. First of all because it reflects the contradictions of its author - a devout Catholic who could be outspokenly critical of the Church, a reactionary monarchist with socialist ideals, a supporter of De Gaulle who became disillusioned with post-war France. It is also difficult because, as its title implies, it expresses its (not always obvious) theological/philosophical message through the medium of a fictional diary - which means long monologues and reminiscences of dialogues between the protagonist and fellow clerics and/or parishioners. Bernanos provides no easy or convenient answers and, for a Catholic novel which ends on a note of hope, it has more than its fair share of existentialist angst. A challenging read, but a strangely captivating one. ( )

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Bernanos is one of the greatest Catholic writers of the 20th Century and this book, winner of the 1936 Grand-Prix of the French Academy, is widely recognised as his masterpiece. A tale of a young, seemingly inept, parish priest in a remote French village, this is indeed a remarkable novel but not necessarily an enjoyable one. Difficult is what it certainly is. First of all because it reflects the contradictions of its author - a devout Catholic who could be outspokenly critical of the Church, a reactionary monarchist with socialist ideals, a supporter of De Gaulle who became disillusioned with post-war France. It is also difficult because, as its title implies, it expresses its (not always obvious) theological/philosophical message through the medium of a fictional diary - which means long monologues and reminiscences of dialogues between the protagonist and fellow clerics and/or parishioners. Bernanos provides no easy or convenient answers and, for a Catholic novel which ends on a note of hope, it has more than its fair share of existentialist angst. A challenging read, but a strangely captivating one. ( )

If you had to guess, you'd probably assume that an English book with this title would be all about badgers, daffodils and hedgehogs, whilst a French one would be full of seething incestuous passion in the cowshed and at least three brutal, violent murders. Or a deadly boring collection of pious reflections.

There is a badger in this book, and a lot of mud, a few sudden deaths, and some Zola-style inherited alcoholism, but this is neither nature-study nor sex-and-social-realism: Bernanos takes his naive young village priest through a succession of tough philosophical and theological debates with himself and with various other characters who all somehow seem to represent different aspects of the author's complicated personality and ideological history. Whether they are priests, knightly bikers, atheist medics, haughty landowners or naughty girls, they all get to set out their arguments in a very fair and reasonable way, but none of them, not even the narrator himself, is allowed to have a convincing answer to the real-world problems of evil, poverty, disease, etc. (Interesting to see that, unlike almost every other novelist, Bernanos seems to treat sex as a very minor and unimportant corner of human morality, a long way behind poverty and inequality.)

The passion and intensity of the debates going on here make this a book that is probably easier to take for young readers than for old cynics, who went through all this when they were seventeen and don't really care to revisit it, but all the same it is fantastic writing, constantly taking you in unexpected directions. And it's ambiguous enough in its conclusions that you certainly don't need to be a convinced Christian (or even a convinced atheist) to appreciate it. ( )