The Bishop's Man: A Novel

✍ Scribed by MacIntyre, Linden

• Book ID: 109154318
• Publisher: Random House
• Year: 2011
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 231 KB
• Category: Fiction
• ISBN-13: 9781582436999

✦ Synopsis

From Publishers Weekly

Fr. Duncan MacAskill has spent much of his career acting as his bishop's clean-up man. Known as the œExorcist,  Father MacAskill makes priests disappear, shifting anyone accused of sex abuse, scandal, or other improprieties to remote locations. Father MacAskill tells his story, shifting in time and place from the recent past to his œexorcisms  of the '80s and back to his exile in Honduras in the '70s, where he was sent after accusing the bishop's mentor of molestation. In the present day, Father MacAskill serves as the parish priest of Creignish, the small Irish town where he grew up; the bishop gave him this easy assignment to keep him away from lawyers looking into the coverups. Rather isolated there, Father MacAskill has plenty of time for reflection and slowly comes to understand the havoc his transferred predatory priests have wreaked upon these communities. MacIntyre, an award-winning Canadian investigative journalist, sheds light on a disturbing subject, but offers no easy answers. Many of the abusive priests, for instance, also take advantage of adult women, acts that Fr. MacAskill says are not about sex. As the priest confronts his role in this web of scandals, he must also exorcise his own demons in this engrossing, lyrical page-turner.
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Review

“The Bishop’s Man centres on a sensitive topic — the sexual abuses perpetrated by Catholic priests on the innocent children in their care. Father Duncan, the first person narrator, has been his bishop's dutiful enforcer, employed to check the excesses of priests and, crucially, to suppress the evidence. But as events veer out of control, he is forced into painful self-knowledge as family, community and friendship are torn apart under the strain of suspicion, obsession and guilt. A brave novel, conceived and written with impressive delicacy and understanding.”
— Statement by Jury, the Scotiabank Giller Prize, 2009

"A novel with the ring of truth.... The Bishop's Man is perhaps as close as we will get to eavesdropping on the private conversations we were never meant to hear among clergy or between clergy and 'complainers.'"
*— The Gazette

_"Engrossing...a serious examination of the theme [the sexual abuse of children] with the page-turning energy of a thriller."
_ — The Globe and Mail
*

Praise for Linden MacIntyre:

“MacIntyre isn’t just another face and larynx from television [but] an honest-to-God writer…”
— Winnipeg Free Press

“MacIntyre is a fine writer.”
— Alistair MacLeod