Pastoral

De: André Alexis

Narrado por: André Alexis

Shortlisted for the Writers' Trust of Canada Fiction Prize
One of The Globe and Mail's Globe 100: Best Books of 2014

There were plans for an official welcome. It was to take place the following Sunday. But those who came to the rectory on Father Pennant's second day were the ones who could not resist seeing him sooner. Here was the man to whom they would confess the darkest things. It was important to feel him out. Mrs. Young, for instance, after she had watched him eat a piece of her macaroni pie, quietly asked what he thought of adultery.

André Alexis brings a modern sensibility and a new liveliness to an age-old genre, the pastoral. For his very first parish, Father Christopher Pennant is sent to the sleepy town of Barrow. With more sheep than people, it is sleepily bucolic - too much Barrow Brew on Barrow Day is the rowdiest it gets. But things aren't so idyllic for Liz Denny, whose fiancé doesn't want to choose between Liz and his more worldly lover Jane, or for Father Pennant himself, whose faith is profoundly shaken by the miracles he witnesses - a mayor walking on water, intelligent gypsy moths, and a talking sheep.

©2014 André Alexis (P)2017 Coach House Books

Reseñas de la Crítica

"This novel's pleasures indeed include a rich sense of place, but that sense comes without sentimentality, and that place is something one might just as easily flee from as call home. Pastoral beauty is certainly on offer, but Alexis' fluid, evocative descriptions of the rural wonders that surround Barrow are much more than nostalgia for a childhood idyll or mere reverie for revere's sake - they constitute the very heart of Pastoral's unresolved/unresolvable crisis of faith." (National Post)

Engaging story and disappointing ending

I really got into the well-developed characters. So much so, that I felt disappointed at the end which left things unresolved.

Good

Characters are well developed. Complex situations are written into the story with the appropriate level of complex reactions from characters. Having read other stories in this series I appreciate the satisfaction of knowing more of some of the characters' stories. Had this not been the case I'd have said this book ends a bit abruptly.

Thoughtful and interesting

This book kept me totally engaged. The story and the ideas - thought and then dismissed but lingering still kept coming. Each character - person, history, land, deserve its own book. Looking forward to the next one.