Faith

It's been a long dry spell of going back to school and this the first book I had to "force" myself to read that wasn't required reading. Sad, right? Good book about a challenging topic and the humanity of all of us--even those we tend to idealize, be they mothers, fathers, siblings, people "in need of rescue", community leaders. We tend to think people should behave in certain roles, according to our classification of them. This book throws all of those stereotypes into the harsh light of examination and for the better, I believe.My four stars instead of five may be strictly due to not being back in the swing of reading, I'm not currently sure how to judge that. It's definitely a book worth reading though. Told from the vantage point of the only daughter in a Boston Catholic family, it describes her admiration for her older half-brother, Art, who became a Catholic priest, the relationship between her parents as she knew it early on and with some hindsight, her relationship with her brother, Mike, and how that evolves through the changing landscape of the main part of the story (purposefully vague so as not to give away the details). The last few chapters contain some profound statements about the human condition and how our predisposition shades our interpretation of "the truth". Again, worth the read!

While this is called a novel, the subject matter is sadly, all too true. The author told the story of one priest's struggle with being accused, how his life was affected as well as any member of his family.The setting is in the Boston area where one of the worst abuse cases came to light.....I know that being Catholic makes it more difficult to read about.The public gets the cut and dried media version but this book, although a work of fiction, makes one realize that each and every case would be worthy of a full length accounting.I highly recommend this story, it will make you think about the abuses, the perpetrators and the victims.I think everyone would agree that the church was in the wrong by trying to cover up so much. In reality, the Voice of the Faithful have succeeded in getting more transparency and the candidates for priesthood are vetted severely, and young boys are not brought in any longer.The main character, Fr. Art, was destined for the priesthood from a very young age for a variety of reasons and at different times in his life, he experiences doubt in himself and what hedoes, sometimes called "The dark night of the soul." This isa. story that needed to be told and Ms. Haigh did it well.

Last year, I read Jennifer Haigh's The Condition and called it my favorite book of the year. Having just finished another of her books, as early in the year as it is, this may be it.Faith centers around the child abuse scandal in the Catholic church, specifically Boston in the 2000's when the scandal was exploding in the city. But the novel is really about the McGann family. The oldest son, Art, is a priest who stands accused of abusing a child. His family is divided in their support of him. His brother is disgusted by his mother whose trust in Art's innocence is absolute.Worse, his sister, Sheila. "If he did it, you'd forgive him," he says to her, and she doesn't deny it.Sheila narrates the story, assuming an omniscient viewpoint that allows her to tell it from each character's perspective, combining her knowledge of them with the versions they have told her. Faith is another portrait of a dysfunctional family, as sick as it's secrets. Sheila's awareness that by writing it all down, she'll be shattering that silence, had me checking and rechecking the book jacket to be sure this wasn't a memoir.I thought I knew where the story was going, but was happy to be wrong. Haigh is an expert at depicting the complicated history and specific architecture of family. I am very glad to see she has other novels out so I don't need to wait another year.-Katie O'Rourke, author of Monsoon Season

I really enjoy Jennifer Haigh's writing, but these two books are exactly the same story with just one major difference. While the Condition is about a medical condition a sister in a family of 2 brothers and her parents, Faith is about a priest's mistake written by his sister with the other characters being a brother and his parents. I would recommend reading one of these books but not both. That being said, Faith was a better story line and I did really enjoy reading it. I found it gripping, which is why I read a 430 page book in 4 days. I feel like you can relate to everyone in this story in one way or another and I love how the author humanizes and develops her characters. I would also recommend Bakers Towers, another great read!

This novel really is about exploring your own inner struggles. What do we allow to influence our thoughts and actions? How do we justify them to ourselves? How do we live with them? Or do we shut them into a closet somewhere and *never* live with them? There are so many different struggles here. So many different causes of them. Most are left(for me) unanswered. But seriously, I think this book could have been another 200 or more pages and still not covered them all. I would have really enjoyed those pages though....just saying....You have some very different women that play major parts in this novel, and yet, they are never.....expanded on? They always seem to be in the background...influencing the story, but never *becoming* the story. You have the Mother to the main characters. The sister. Mike's wife. The mother of the little boy. Even the obese best friend. Honestly, this story could have been told from any one of these ladies viewpoints and been just as good IF NOT EVEN BETTER than it was.I won't go into plot here....but I will say that sometimes the worst things you can think about are only the very edge of the over all picture. What drives you? What past sins do you carry with you throughout your life? Which ones do you let shape you into the person that you later become? Were they your sins or another's? More so, what transgressions keep you up at night and haunt your waking hours as well? What negatives do you measure your current worth against? How far are you willing to carry your own secrets? How much do the weight of these secrets effect you?Art was such a complex character. People took his silence for just that...silence....never understanding the riptides that tore at his inner being....The one complaint I had about this book is that at times it didn't seem to flow like it should. I got confused about who's voice was current at the time between the sister and the younger brother. Other than that, this was a really good book. I really enjoyed it. For me there were many unanswered questions....why was the sister like she was? What happened to the first husband? As in real life, sometimes the questions we want answered the most never are.Highly recommend....this book stays with you into the night....long after you turn that last page....