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Office of Innocence by Thomas
Keneally Rating: ••• (Recommended) |
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Thoughtful By the time you finish reading Office of
Innocence, the new novel by Thomas Keneally, you’ll be nodding your head
with deeper understanding of human nature. Through the exposition of well
defined characters, Keneally takes us through the surface levels of innocence
and naivete, into the deeper levels of behavior that lead toward insight into
others. Here’s an excerpt (pp. 212-15), of a scene between young Father
Darragh and Trumble, the lover of a parishioner, Rose: Darragh did not know where
the impulse to confide in this hostile, half-tipsy Marxist came from. Darragh
was God's storm trooper only in Trumble's mind. In the monsignor's, in the
vicar-general's, he was an ee-jit and a fable. "I'm just another
man, Ross. Just another confused, battling yokel." "Oh yeah. You really
loved it when I said that to you last time. Well, let me repeat, Sonny Jim.
To me you are just another bloke. And there! You are!" And to
emphasize the there he punched Darragh full force on the shoulder. But
then he seemed to despair of blows. "There's nothing I can do to you to
make up for your bloody creeping influence on Rosie." "In the case of Mrs.
Flood," Darragh told him, willing now to stoke the man's confusion of
soul, his shoulder smarting, "it wasn't me at work. It was something
more than me." He was perversely
delighted to see Trumble's certain fury return. When you strike again, he
thought, I'll damn well strike you! "Oh, save me from
that I-am-but-an-instrument shit," Trumble declared, showing in his
maddened eyes how well Darragh's line had worked. "That makes me really
fucking angry. I could beat the fucking certainty out of you." Darragh said, "I
think you might be more certain than me. We both try to live by great
certainty, don't we?" "Don't bloody say
that," shouted Trumble. "That's utter bullshit! My certainties have
a scientific, social, and economic basis. Yours are fucking fairy
tales." "Maybe that's why I'm
having a few problems with them," Darragh admitted, ringing the changes
now between divine messenger and ordinary fellow. Although, he noticed, even
in the midst of all this yelling, it was easier to be frank with an enemy
than with the guardians of the Faith. Trumble asked, "If
you've got any doubts, why did you need to come hunting down Rosie and
Kate?" Darragh, the darkness of
his rage a potent comfort, was enjoying himself. He had Trumble's head
spinning, he could see. Darragh's mother had spoken in awe of his gentle
father's Gaelic temper emerging in his youth, the power of his rage, his
determination that the insulter should not walk away before blows were thrown
and blood drawn. That madness was in him now, but he retained throughout his
cunning in debate. "Look, Ross," he
said, "I believe in the flawed nature of humanity. I believe Stalin is
as lustful for power as any man. I believe the Pope is subject to sin. You
believe people are born perfect, and it's ownership that destroys them, that
having it or not having it is all that makes them bad. You're more innocent
than I am. You're touchingly innocent. You'd make a damn good student for the
priesthood." "I can't bloody
believe this," said Trumble, casting his eyes to the mute-dark sky, and
at a loss to take the discussion further, he threw a considerable punch at
Darragh. It landed on the side of his neck, an improbable level of force and
intent in it. Darragh, very satisfied, could not stop himself bending over,
gagging, and thus inviting Trumble into his defenses. It was easy for Trumble
now to strike him again on the upper cheek, showing great accuracy for a man
who had been drinking. It was as Darragh had read in the novels—the heavens
lit up with whirling stars, and a
bilious incredible day supplanted night. But he had his balance, at least,
and grabbed the solidity of Trumble, driving him back in an imperfect but
potent rugby tackle, the kind which the brothers of his boyhood would have
considered a poor substitute to real sportsmanship. A short, half-smothered
punch against his ear brought further foul comets into Darragh's vision. He began to pummel Trumble's
kidney area, and stood up and reeled off one good blow against Trumble's left
cheek. Even so concussed, he knew that this was not the Christian martyrs'
way, to try to oppose one's own lions to the lions of the tyrant. The true
way was to open one's breast to the claws, but Darragh could not manage it.
He threw another truncated and worthy punch into the soft and—as he thought
of it—beery flesh near Trumble's spine, where a rare area of flabbiness
absorbed it and robbed it of some meaning. Then he pulled himself away and
brought a short, satisfactory blow on Trumble's ear. But the man's forehead,
fair, steely, and dense, descended on Darragh's temple and proclaimed another
brief, vicious, sickly day. At that moment of pain,
his anger departed. It occurred to him to ask what he was doing, brawling in
a street, after hotel-closing, outside a dead woman's house. It means I must
now take what he gives, Dariagh concluded. Dull and vivid blows one after
another. I am at last submissive, he declared to himself, with the faintest
glow of pleasure and a large fear of coming impacts. But some ministers of mercy were all at
once there, holding him firmly the shoulder, dragging Trumble off, and
crying, "Hang on! Whoa there! What the bloody hell!" Once he knew
he was safe from further blows, he could tell at once these two men were
plainclothes policemen. They wore the suit, differentiated only by minutiae
of pattern, which Inspector Kearney wore. They wore the same hat from Anthony
Hordern's. Darragh saw the younger of the two men give Trumble a very
effective crack across the back of the head, involving not just the fist but
the forearm as well, and delivered with the laziness of long practice.
"What the fuck are you doing, Trumble? Beating up priests now? You ought
to be fucking interned, you prick. Sorry, Father. Pardon my French." "They were all
saying that these days, all the profaners mild and heroic, even poor old Bert
Flood. In this case, Darragh lacked the breath to forgive the policeman’s
French. The older policeman told Trumble he was on a warning, he was watched,
he was to go home. He ought to keep a bag packed too, because bastards like
him could be interned any second. Just as well old Joe Stalin was on our side
now, the younger suited cop remarked. Only thing that saved Trumble's rotten
bloody bacon. "Unless you want to prefer charges, do you. Father?" Darragh found the breath
twice to say no. The older copper said he thought that was wise in these
circumstances. "What
circumstances?" Trumble challenged. "Well," said
the younger policeman, nodding towards Kate Heggarty's house. "I didn't see him
come out of there," said Trumble, showing his solidarity with Darragh
against the police. "Don't argue with
the bastard. Cliff. Haul off to buggery, Trumble." Trumble gathered his
limbs, disordered by conflict, and began to slouch homeward up the Crescent.
Still living with Bert Flood, it seemed. Brothers in lost love, of one kind
or another. Darragh, breathing, sore
in the head but subject to no more false flashes of light, concluded the
detectives wanted to get rid of Trumble because he did not hold any real
interest for them. With him, their manner had been that of schoolteachers who
subjected a bad student casually and daily to their contempt. But they found
him, Darragh, more interesting, he surmised. "Do you have a car here,
Father?" asked the older policeman. "I was just out for
a walk," said Darragh. It was so obvious—he knew from all the
Saturday-afternoon matinees that the murderer always returned. He could see
in the older policeman's eye that this must be a valid principle, since there
was a meaningfulness, and he turned to swap that meaningfulness with the
younger policeman. Both of them were older than he, and wise according to
their way. Keneally’s fine writing in Office of
Innocence provides enough reason to read this book. The fact that you’ll
be thinking about innocence for weeks following your turn of the last page is
even more reason to give this novel a try. Steve Hopkins, September 23, 2003 |
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ă 2003 Hopkins and Company, LLC The
recommendation rating for this book appeared in the October 2003
issue of Executive
Times URL
for this review: http://www.hopkinsandcompany.com/Books/Office
of Innocence.htm For
Reprint Permission, Contact: Hopkins
& Company, LLC • 723 North Kenilworth Avenue • Oak Park, IL 60302 E-mail: books@hopkinsandcompany.com |
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