An English priest adrift in Scotland becomes the target of his own parish in this โnuanced, intense and complex [novel] . . . Read it twiceโ (Hilary Mantle, Guardian, UK).
โAlways trust a stranger,โ said Davidโs mother when he returned from Rome. โItโs the people you know who let you down.โ
Half a life later, David is Father Anderton, a Catholic priest with a small parish in Scotland. He befriends Mark and Lisa, rebellious local teenagers who live in a world he barely understands. Their company stirs memories of earlier happinessโhis days at a Catholic school in Yorkshire, the student revolt in 1960s Oxford, and a choice he once made in the orange groves of Rome.
But their friendship also ignites the suspicions and smoldering hatred of a town that resents strangers, and brings Father David to a reckoning with the gathered tensions of past and present. In this masterfully written novel, Andrew OโHagan explores the emotional and moral contradictions of religious life in a faithless age.
Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize