Helen Baker

I liked this book: the dedication to Our Lady of Fatima set the tone and the opening prologue was well written and particularly moving. It is not an easy task to write about the effect of pedophilia as practised by certain Catholic clergy on young children and as such the topic is very confronting but in my opinion well handled. Difficult too to write in the first person when one of the victims of clergy pedophilia is the leading voice. I felt that the male characters were particularly well rounded, well drawn but the female characters, in particular the female lead, Susan, lacked colour equal to that of the prominent male characters. I was at times baffled by the relationship between lead male (Antonio) and Susan. Antonio appeared as a suffering, loyal, yet determined young man, whereas Susan seemed to undermine his best intentions or disappear from the scene entirely when he most needed her support and to my mind she always appeared ambivalent and usually servile, firstly to her parents, then to Craven, then it seems to Antonio himself.. I thought that Antonio would have merited a resourceful, understanding and courageous love akin to himself and one I felt he deserved, and needed as a balm for his manifold sufferings - I noted his comment to Susan that she could be quite sarcastic to him - not the best way to deal with such a suffering, conflict ridden young person seeking peace especially peace within himself. Antonio's relationship with his cardinal soon to be Pope family friend Albino was, I felt sensitively drawn and I liked the expression of the close friendship between them throughout the book. Ron's friendship and assault leading to his demise were very well drawn, and clearly showed the devastation of two young lads both victims of the same religious pedophile Antonio's family connections were sensitively drawn and I found their deaths quite jolting but very critical to Antonio's psychological formation. I particularly liked the pace of the writing and found it hard to put down over a wet long weekend when perhaps I should have been doing some other things.. The extent of the author's obvious research was very impressive, the catacombs felt almost real and Antonio's three days of trying to escape the Mafia were particularly well drawn- loved the car going over the cliff in the National Park - nice adventurous touch! Well worth the trouble to read