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    No Other Life
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    No Other Life
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    No Other Life
    Ebook247 pages7 hours

    No Other Life

    By Brian Moore

    4/5

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    About this ebook


    ____________________

    'In this explosive book Moore brings a world pulsating to life, with vivid descriptive writing and a series of beautifully accurate vignettes' - Financial Times

    'Tightly-made and absorbing. Brian Moore is a highly intelligent writer who has the enviable ability to make you want to go on turning the pages... this is a very exciting book' - A. N. Wilson, Evening Standard

    'The profundity of this book is achieved with breathtaking lightness... Moore can push the reader's mind against its own extremities' - Guardian
    ____________________

    When Father Paul Michel, a missionary on the desperately poor Caribbean island of Ganae, plucks a black child from abject poverty, he does not expect the boy to become a charismatic Catholic priest and outspoken revolutionary. Jeannot, as Father Paul calls him, is a messianic orator who bravely urges his black brethren to rise against their oppressors. At odds with the Vatican in Rome, he is expelled from his order only to emerge as the first democratically elected president of the volatile Ganae.

    Antagonising the mulatto elite and the ruling military junta, Jeannot discovers his enemies will stop at nothing - assassination, arson, brutal repression - to destroy him. Even Father Paul, who tells this story, is unsure whether Jeannot is saint or tyrant. In this deeply unsettling novel, Brian Moore weighs immortal souls against mortal misery.
    ____________________

    'Poised, bracing and moving... if pleasure indeed corrupts the soul, then this very novel is a twenty-four carat sin' - Independent

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBloomsbury Publishing
    Release dateNov 7, 2011
    ISBN9781408828915
    Unavailable
    No Other Life
    Author

    Brian Moore

    Brian Moore, whom Graham Greene called his ‘favourite living novelist’, was born in Belfast in 1921. He emigrated to Canada in 1948, where he became a journalist and adopted Canadian citizenship. He spent some time in New York before settling in California.

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    Reviews for No Other Life

    4/5

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    • 5/5
      Brian Moore was a well known writer of the 1980s and 1990s. He wrote the 1991 screenplay based on his novel, Black Robe, exploring the Jesuit missions with ative Americans in frontier Canada. Moore was short-listed several times for the Booker Prize.In No Other Life, the black robes of Jesuits are exchanged for the white robes of the White Augustinians, and the cold places of Canada for the warmth of Ganae. a desperately poor Caribbean island. The Augustinian Fathers run a school where the mulâtre (mixed-race) elite educate their children. The noirs, the blacks, are kept in wrenching poverty by corruption. The island has always been run by a dictator backed by the army. Father Paul Michel wants to increase the number of black children at the school. He rescues a talented boy, Jeannot, from abject poverty. Jeannot is a single-minded boy who declares he wants to be a priest like his mentor. He eventually joins the Augustinians but runs a parish for the poor rather than work in the Order’s school. Jeannot’s oratory raises the hopes of the poor and he is elected President. But the effects of his leadership are ambiguous: is he an old-style socialist rabble-rouser, or is he a saint? The locals think he is their Messiah. When the Augustinians expel Jeannot, he turns to his mentor. He implies that he would rather give up everything than be stripped of his priesthood. There is ‘no other life’. Father Paul finds himself at the heart of a dilemma: is a priest an educator of the rich, or the servant of the poor? Is faith a pre-requisite, and what happens if a priest loses it? From the moment he meets Jeannot he feels a bond with him, but as their friendship grows, Father Paul learns how to love. When violence and chaos erupt from the actions of his friend Father Paul asks how far does loyal love extend? This is a gripping and beautiful story, written with a sure touch. The events on the island of Ganae are presented in a fascinating manner, but the themes of ambition and identity resonate everywhere. No Other Life is certainly a book for priests. What is the core of Christian priesthood, and by extension, Christian practice? Is there ‘no other life’ that we can imagine for ourselves? And if not, that goes to our vocation and identity. But is a also a novel that will draw in any person and open us to the love that is in our midst even when we feel it is absent.
    • 4/5
      an irritating character but perhaps we all are.
    • 4/5
      Another ‘immigrant’ story, this time of the Irishman James Francis “Ginger” Coffey in 1950s Montreal. Ginger really is a loser – the ne’er-do-well who got by on his charm and connections at “home” but who isn’t willing to take a step down and make his way by working hard here. Winner of the 1960 Governor-General’s Award for Fiction, and a Canadian classic, this gives a different look at Montreal than the author’s contemporary Mordecai Richler portrayed.Read this if: you’ve read some Richler and want to compare and contrast the Irish and the Jewish immigrant experiences; or you’re interested in the twentieth century Irish experience in Canada. 4 stars
    • 3/5
      Sad tale of a disillusioned New Canadian loser. The novel is well-written and painful--Canada comes off as a snowy hell.