The Bishop's Man by Linden Macintyre

The Bishops Man written by Linden Macintyre is a very gentle book, even though the subject is dark and insidious, the novel meanders through episodes and seasons gently. The Bishop's man as the title very precisely states is largely a novel about a Priest who is charged to follow the Bishops instructions. These instructions involve the need to temporarily rectify or set straight the misdirected, misplaced, misled bastions of the Church namely Clergy who have erred, succumbed to the more human fallacy-temptation. It follows the priest Duncan MacAskill as he is led away from the rhythms of his University position to the small town of Creignish where he is sent to lay low for a while. The reason for the forced departure to the small village of Creignish are clouded as is much of the information that the Bishop disperses to MacAskill .


The characters that MacAskill encounters in the village, the priest Mullins, Danny Ban, Stella, Danny Mackay, are well rounded. Without delving into character details directly, they are unveiled slowly like wispy secrets that all our lives are, expelled as brief wispy breaths between characters.


The sub-set of characters include Effie, Sextus, John, Jacinta and Alfonso all of whom are skeletons from a deep, darker past illuminated only through the musings of Duncan. There is romantic confusion, a past that is revealed only into the final pages of the book, an apparent suicide, an insinuation of family secrets, a romance that flutters in Latin America, where players are revealed in journalistic rhapsody.
It is not a play by play novel.
It is a heavy mix of lies, deception, of half truths un-shelled with dexterity not by the clergy but surprisingly by it's flock. Yet the stories of each are revealed with a gentle catharsis until there were no more stories left to be told, just raw emotion unfiltered. Duncan MacAskill is the invisible cause and effect, the righter of wrongs, the redeemer. Eventually he is laid bare as just a man with a past to decipher, a present that he drinks to stay relevant in, and a future that is undeniably so interspersed with the present and past that he cannot get there from here. Not easily. Not without confronting his own demons and the ones that he has unknowingly set forth, for better or for worse..


I know that I have not been descriptive about the book, it is a hard topic to address and the novel has made a far more valiant effort.