This is cathartic. Since I’ve finished The Father’s Tale I have gone looking for negative reviews and each one is a balm to my soul. I think I hate it more than any book I have ever read and I’ve been trying to figure out why I’ve had such an emotional response to the book. Part of it is that so many people are trying to convince me it’s good. And it just objectively is not. I was very restrained at my WRM meeting because everyone else loved it. I explained that I thought the writing was substandard. Later a friend said, “We all know Colleen didn’t love the verbiage.” As if that is all there is to writing! Word choice. What about the basics of good storytelling, all the things you pointed out in this newsletter? I’m offended that Ignatius Press published it as is. I expect better from them. And I expect better from WRM. Writing matters. Craft matters. It’s because people require so little good craft from Christian and Catholic writers that the entire genre is little more than a punchline to broader society. We deserve better and we should demand better.
I think I've got a pretty good threshold of reading books that have bad elements, like, I can take it. But a book with SO MANY things in it that are terrible just set me off completely.
This. 100%. I was willing to give O'Brien the benefit of the doubt for the first half of the book, but once we got stuck in this bizarre "Sleepless in Siberia" portion where the "Finding Andrew" plot was almost entirely dropped, I lost my patience.
"Sleepless in Siberia"! I am crying tears of laughter. Truly I was worried about a sex scene at one point, and I thought to myself, I will die if there's a sex scene.
I was …. not restrained at my meeting the other night 😂. In fact, I’d been looking forward to going nuts about it since I finished it. Ha. You’re right— this has little to do with “verbiage” and everything to do with literature as an art form, and a craft, as you said.
I love this review so much. I kept comparing it to Peace Like a River, which is also a journey of a father to find his son, but just works in all the ways Father's Tale doesn't.
I LOVE Peace Like a River with such a fiery passion that it pains me to know that both these books are on any list together. That is a story that is weird but the author pulls it off because his characters have depth and real human emotion. Not all the characters are likeable but they are moved by the story in such a way that the reader is compelled to route for them, we want them to succeed! Just completely opposite reading experiences and books.
Oh my gosh, I cannot even with a thought that Peace could be on the same plane as This Book. Peace absolutely blew me the heck away, said by someone who reads living authors about once every few years and hates 9/10 of them. Haha. I have so many thoughts about Peace and what this story was doing, that it’s painful to think of it in the same list as This One.
That's actually a really good point. Two novels about fathers searching for their sons, albeit from different perspectives. But one of the authors understands the art of subtlety and nuance, and one of them doesn't.
Thank you, Christy, and all fellow commenters for making the reading of this book slightly more tolerable with just criticism. I really want to know how so many people were seemingly brainwashed into writing positive reviews. The consensus of my WRM group is that everyone hated it.
I think it particularly infuriated me that WRM selected it, because this kind of book is so antithetical to their entire mission of encouraging women to “read well.”
I love your point about the importance of being able to discuss bad books or develop the skills of personal criticism, and I totally agree. One of my personal struggles with my parents is our huge disconnect when discussing books and movies. They both came of age in circumstances where they were the first generation in their families to attend college, but their education (and childhood religious formation) was very practical and not humanistic. As such, they struggle to engage with stories that aren’t moralistic or explicitly Christian. My late father, for instance, refused to read LOTR because it was fantasy. They would probably be deeply scandalized by Flannery O’Connor’s work, and not in a productive way. Not that every Christian has to be a literary scholar, but the collective Catholic imagination is in pretty dire straits these days. We need to do better! The tragedy of the modern publishing industry is that it is so driven by consumeristic reading, and the tragedy of the Christian publishing world is that so often the quality is ignored just because it paints faith in a positive light. It’s a contributing factor to why so many people aren’t capable of engaging with the hard realities of the real world or work towards understanding people who come from different circumstances.
I think we need to engage art at all levels, and that means talking about what's good and what's bad. But at the same time not dismissing it completely. I have always defended WRM in their books picks, even if I really dislike it, but I do think that this was probably their worst fail because of the length and by presuming women should read it in one month. This is not Anna Karenina or War and Peace, huge classics that deserve our time, this was a really misguidedly long, bad novel. And while I want WRM to not just have classics, I think that if they're going to choose a book that isn't quite at classic standards it should be shorter. I am going to presume that WRM is going to hear a lot of complaints as well they should.
This is just my second year doing WRM, and the selections have been a little hit or miss for me. What has been your experience of their picks? Have some years been better than others? I don’t expect everything to be to my taste, and it’s been good for me to read more widely again, but I’ve been a little disappointed.
I would say that this is probably my least liked year as well, and I've been in it for about ten years. I think with any book club the expectation shouldn't be that you're going to love every book, but that you have good discussion from every book and that most books are worth reading.
I’m actually really pumped about the other books! FT was just a huge whiff amongst other solid picks (Peace Like A River!, Lear, Pinocchio; I enjoyed The Pearl, and am re-reading Cry the Beloved Country which I really liked the first time I read it. And I usually like Gaskell so I have high hopes!)
No, the worst in my memory was Year of the Friend (soooo many awful friends!). 😆
This is such a great articulation of why to read critically — as in analytically — at all. It’s not to bash books but to highlight what works or doesn’t and why, which makes it easier to identify books that really are good and move us.
I probably liked the book a little more than you, Christy, because I like Russian characters; I was moved by some of the stories but agree that there were just far too many to even remember. I had the (somewhat unpleasant) revelation sometime when he was in Russia, as I was getting frustrated with his internal spiritual, very circular journey that my spiritual journey is also quite circular and repetitive and so that part felt somewhat authentic to me. But I want a good book to move me beyond that, and this didn’t do it at all.
One more pet peeve: I didn’t like how Alex related to women at all. I get that Carol was the love of his life, but he romanticized their marriage so much and then was not able to relate to almost any woman in the book in a healthy way. Any thought about another woman was either a desecration of Carol’s memory or a jump into a new love and relationship. That felt weird to me and really like a mark of immaturity in him.
Final note — I totally agree that the jump to a Russian prison and water boarding and being captured by the Chinese was completely off the rails and felt like a completely
different book. The only thing I can think of that would justify is that he was using it to speak to Chinese Christians and let them know he is praying for them and sharing their plight with Westerners. The dedication at the beginning says “With love and gratitude to my sister in Beijing (who must remain unnamed, a flower of Christ in China), and to her spiritual children. And to the unknown martyrs of Russia and China, whose sacrifices will be revealed at the time of harvest.” I wonder if he was trying to slip a message past Chinese censors, thinking there was no way they would read all the way to the end of this massive book. I know that sounds farfetched, but Chinese censors missed some major anti-Communist elements of The Three-Body Problem and allowed it to be published in China because the author moved them to later in the story. That is literally the one reason I can think of to explain why Alex ends up in China at all.
I completely agree with the points you make! I don't mind if a spiritual journey is circular, but it is the writer's job to take the ordinary and make it compelling for the reader. Realism isn't an excuse for bad craftsmanship. His relating to women was infuriating, and I could have added that to my long list of grievances but I had to restrain myself. He was just such an annoying character with no redeeming qualities!
You eloquently summarized my precise feelings about this awful book. I kept thinking that it would eventually boomerang around and I'd have this ah-ha moment where I understood the point. No such luck. Only fury over giving up so much precious time (and money) to read this garbage.
I felt like we'd get at least a little bit of satisfaction somewhere, but nothing! And then to have him wrap up his whole son's experience in a few paragraphs sent me off the deep end!
Have you read any of O'Brien's other fiction? I read the Strangers and Sojourners trilogy and had very mixed feelings. It has been years so my memory is not fresh, but I do remember parts of it being compelling. But a lot of it (especially the parts set in modern and future time) felt way too dramatic and moralistic. The Catholicism felt way too in your face. And I completely agree about never wanting to hand it to a non-Catholic and expect them to take it seriously. I have always thought that maybe I was missing something because Peter Kreeft compares Michael O'Brien to Flannery O'Connor, Graham Greene, and Evelyn Waugh. And I respect Peter Kreeft. However your review of this book makes me think I might not want to read any more O'Brien.
I too was giggling at all of the offense at the "negative" Dickens talk on another corner of the internet. I love Dickens, and I still think it is an interesting conversation and was offended not at all!
Well, it’s important to remember that Peter Kreeft is a philosopher, not a literary critic. A lot of Christian/Catholic public intellectuals tend to be particularly awkward when they drift into things outside their professional area of expertise. Not that they should never comment on other subjects, but many of them could benefit from a better filter when they do.
That is a good point. I guess I just trust Kreefts other literature recommendations so I assume he has good taste. If you love Waugh, Greene, Flannery, and Dostoevsky then I trust your taste for other books too.
I guess I'm wondering what people that have read multiple O'Brien books think. Are some better than others?
Exactly. Kreeft’s field is not literature. I was more concerned that a Baylor Literature and Humanities professor gave it a glowing thumbs on the back. Not a good look for him!
I've read some of Strangers and Sojourners and some of Father Elijah and hated them both I didn't finish. I basically only finished this book because people in my book club were getting cranky about people not finishing the books, and once I hated this so much I had to finish it so I could critique it fully! I love Peter Kreeft, but I think it's safe to say he's not a lit prof, he's a philosophy prof and maybe we shouldn't take his taste in novels too seriously.
I go up and down with Dickens, because as I'm reading him I can be screaming at how annoying he can be but at the same time absolutely love his characters and scenes. But to think he can't be criticized or have a discussion about his writing is so bizarre to me. And they weren't being negative!! I just felt like I was in some weird upside down because if people want negative they should come on over here and hear me talk about Michael O'Brien, you know?
I think it is an interesting point to say that Peter Kreeft can be a wonderful philosophy writer and prof and not be the best place to go for recommendations for literature. He may love the ideas in a novel, but that's not ultimately what a novel is for. A good novel has to be a good story.
I loved the way Karen Ullo described how they pick books for Chrism Press. I'm quoting badly here, but it was something along the lines of "You can have the best ideas in the world, but if it isn't a good story we aren't going to publish it."
(If you want to hear her actual quote it came out at Reading Revisited on the podcast in early January)
As for Dickens...I saw all the talk about how negative it was and then listened to the podcast and was surprised how I didn't find it very negative at all!
I appreciate your negative book talk. I find it hilarious and fun!
I love Peter Kreeft and I think he's brilliant and at the same time I think he can be wrong about this book!! Haha! I also think Michael O'Brien can be a very lovely and probably very holy man without thinking he's a classic novelist. We do not need to be amazing novelists in order to get into heaven, thank God! But yes, just because the content or themes of a novel are good doesn't mean that the book itself succeeds as a readable, enjoyable, good story. And it's ok for all of us to admit that!
Love it! Thanks for humorously leading me through more thoughts on the connection between virtue and art. I'm always here for your book reviews and thoughts!
I came on to say the same thing. I’ve only read Strangers and Sojourners and don’t remember hating it. Then again, I was a brand new Catholic, so it could be that I was just so thrilled to see Catholicism anywhere I could find it that I didn’t realize how bad the writing was. I hear things about Father Elijah and Island of the World from persons who generally have really good taste so I keep hoping this isn’t representative of the whole? Who knows. (Oh and the angst over podcasters not loving Dickens had been hilarious. 🍿)
Strangers and Sojourners was definitely my favorite in the series and I was wondering if it was because the setting was back in time. Is it easier to be nuanced about a time past? I'm truly asking because I don't know. I have heard good things about both of those books as well. I would love to hear more opinions!
The plot was slightly tighter in S and S. It was vastly shorter. It had far fewer characters to track. So in that sense, I think it was easier to digest as a reader. However, it definitely had the same writing flaws as Christy pointed out about FT (horrible dialogue, jumping all over in the plot, trying so hard to sound profound, or in general— telling, not showing!).
Thank you for this! I am struggling so hard through The Father’s Tale right now. I just want to be done. And I kept wondering if there was something wrong with me/maybe I was being too nitpicky. But looks like the problems I’m seeing are visible to others, and that helps so much
If I hadn’t bought it I would have given it up. And I want to at least getting the benefit of adding a book to my reading challenge rather than having wasted my time 😂
Thank. You. Christy!!! The content I’ve been waiting for! I’m also confused about the decision to include this book in WRM and make all of us women endure this pain. It’s subpar writing— who cares if he’s Catholic? The biographical fallacy drives me nuts. But anyway, your last sentence was absolutely perfect and had me laughing hysterically. It was definitely a form of suffering. 😂
From the response I've gotten here and on instagram when I talk about the book I assume WRM is going to get a lot of negative blowback about this choice!
Christy, I just saw you quoted in a piece on The Dispatch! I’ve been a lurker on your substack for a while and just started commenting more recently but was really happy to see that.
The more I think about this book the more I hate it. It really seemed like he didn’t have an editor! Unless the book was 3000 pages long and they edited it down to this! I’m glad it’s not just me, it left me feeling somewhat unhinged
Yasss. No better way to wake up on a saturday morning than finding this gem in your inbox. This book is so heavy handed! My parish priest said he read it last summer and loved it and that makes me.... judge him. I get it, most books are very openly hostile to Catholics and especially the clergy but this book is just so simplistic. And the Russians! I couldn't care less and Michael O'Brien clearly couldn't possibly care more about Russians. It's all too much! Thank you for your clear eyed, take-no-prisoners review!
I mean, maybe your priest has a similar problem with Peter Kreeft in that they simply don't read non-fiction so they think this is good??? That's the most charitable way I can look at it!
I appreciate that you are willing to talk negatively about a book! (especially one written by a Catholic author who some people absolutely love). I think it's important to be able to analyze books as we discuss them, and not just jump on the bandwagon of forcing ourselves to like a book because it's what WRM picked or because it's written by O'Brien. I recently attended the Catholic Writer's online conference, and at least one of the presenters talked about how we need to create high-quality literature and not just say, "Oh, well because a character/theme/story is Catholic, that makes it worth reading." I've never read The Father's Tale, but reading your review, I think my time would be better spent rereading Laurus by Vodolazkin (even if the plot or themes aren't identical, that book profoundly illustrates suffering and love and sacrifice and is so well-written!).
I agree, Laurus is a beautiful book and one with themes of fatherhood which are explored in much more depth and nuance than The Father's Tale. I don't like dumping on Catholic literature, but it has to be held to the same basic standards of any literature.
Yes, C. S. Lewis and Dorothy Sayers (Sayers especially!) were adamant about this! Art must be written for its own sake/end. As soon as you set out with a moralistic message it’s just…something else. But it’s not literature anymore. This happens so much right now on both sides of the aisle; didacticism in writing is a scourge of our time honestly!
Having just finished reading The Father's Tale, I will say that Laurus by Vodolazkin is everything that O'Brien's novel isn't. It is a beautifully crafted fundamentally Christian book! I highly recommend!
The more I think about it, the more I wish that Well-Read Mom had picked Laurus instead. It beautifully and devastatingly depicts fatherhood gone wrong and then fatherhood redeemed.
So true! It’s beautifully written and fits the fatherhood theme so well, much better than The Father’s Tale does. It’s a book I would read for a second or a third time. But The Father’s Tale… never again.
My WRM group meets Tuesday, but I’ve have the sense from some that the discussion is going to lean positive. I am not able to articulate the problems as well as Christy and you all, but suffice it to say there is too much navel gazing without enough growth for my taste, and Alex annoys me. If he were a real person in my life, I’d avoid encounters with him. I am half-way through, and now that I know it goes EXTRA off the rails with the spy storyline I’m going to stop now and not feel guilty.
The questions I have (because I am not super well read) are these: are there books/authors that infuse their writing with Catholic sensibilities and order without hitting you over the head? Are there books/authors that do hit you over the head, but somehow in a way that’s forgivable (like not being 1000 pages long, have lovely characters etc)?
I second The Power & The Glory by Graham Greene and Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather. Also, The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, if you want to read recent fiction by (good) Catholic authors. The Goldfinch is dark and a little rough at times, but it is skillfully crafted and a beautiful story.
Ooh! The Power and The Glory by Graham Greene. A thought provoking book with very complex characters, but not what I would call lovely characters. Sigrid Undset's Master of Hestviken series (must be the translation by Tiina Nunnally). Evelyn Waugh's Helena. Waugh's Sword of Honour Trilogy. Chesterton's The Man Who was Thursday is heavy handed and bizarre, but very enjoyable, in my opinion.
Edit: also Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop or Shadows on the Rock. Those really do have lovely characters. And Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov is long and heavy, but totally worth reading! Much more nuanced than Father's Tale.
Thank you so much for saying this 😂. I felt like the odd man out because my book club leader loved the book and I found it to be... dreadful. And that's putting it mildly. Thanks for saying what I was thinking 😂
This is cathartic. Since I’ve finished The Father’s Tale I have gone looking for negative reviews and each one is a balm to my soul. I think I hate it more than any book I have ever read and I’ve been trying to figure out why I’ve had such an emotional response to the book. Part of it is that so many people are trying to convince me it’s good. And it just objectively is not. I was very restrained at my WRM meeting because everyone else loved it. I explained that I thought the writing was substandard. Later a friend said, “We all know Colleen didn’t love the verbiage.” As if that is all there is to writing! Word choice. What about the basics of good storytelling, all the things you pointed out in this newsletter? I’m offended that Ignatius Press published it as is. I expect better from them. And I expect better from WRM. Writing matters. Craft matters. It’s because people require so little good craft from Christian and Catholic writers that the entire genre is little more than a punchline to broader society. We deserve better and we should demand better.
I think I've got a pretty good threshold of reading books that have bad elements, like, I can take it. But a book with SO MANY things in it that are terrible just set me off completely.
This. 100%. I was willing to give O'Brien the benefit of the doubt for the first half of the book, but once we got stuck in this bizarre "Sleepless in Siberia" portion where the "Finding Andrew" plot was almost entirely dropped, I lost my patience.
"Sleepless in Siberia"! I am crying tears of laughter. Truly I was worried about a sex scene at one point, and I thought to myself, I will die if there's a sex scene.
I was …. not restrained at my meeting the other night 😂. In fact, I’d been looking forward to going nuts about it since I finished it. Ha. You’re right— this has little to do with “verbiage” and everything to do with literature as an art form, and a craft, as you said.
This is exactly how I feel, but more eloquently stated than I could!
This was phenomenally enjoyable. It is so nice to read a review from someone who loathes O’Brien’s writing as much as I do.
Never again! As God as my witness I will not be guilted into reading him ever again!
Oh gosh, Emily, it makes me feel so vindicated to hear that you hate his writing!!
I am just confused why anyone who likes books likes it.
"But because O’Brien wanted to teach us about suffering, maybe in a roundabout way he succeeded." - GOLD
I have not read this book but I still enjoyed everything about this review. Please keep up the good work.
Thanks, Mantoan. I live to serve!
I love this review so much. I kept comparing it to Peace Like a River, which is also a journey of a father to find his son, but just works in all the ways Father's Tale doesn't.
I LOVE Peace Like a River with such a fiery passion that it pains me to know that both these books are on any list together. That is a story that is weird but the author pulls it off because his characters have depth and real human emotion. Not all the characters are likeable but they are moved by the story in such a way that the reader is compelled to route for them, we want them to succeed! Just completely opposite reading experiences and books.
Oh my gosh, I cannot even with a thought that Peace could be on the same plane as This Book. Peace absolutely blew me the heck away, said by someone who reads living authors about once every few years and hates 9/10 of them. Haha. I have so many thoughts about Peace and what this story was doing, that it’s painful to think of it in the same list as This One.
That's actually a really good point. Two novels about fathers searching for their sons, albeit from different perspectives. But one of the authors understands the art of subtlety and nuance, and one of them doesn't.
Yes me too
Thank you, Christy, and all fellow commenters for making the reading of this book slightly more tolerable with just criticism. I really want to know how so many people were seemingly brainwashed into writing positive reviews. The consensus of my WRM group is that everyone hated it.
I think it particularly infuriated me that WRM selected it, because this kind of book is so antithetical to their entire mission of encouraging women to “read well.”
I love your point about the importance of being able to discuss bad books or develop the skills of personal criticism, and I totally agree. One of my personal struggles with my parents is our huge disconnect when discussing books and movies. They both came of age in circumstances where they were the first generation in their families to attend college, but their education (and childhood religious formation) was very practical and not humanistic. As such, they struggle to engage with stories that aren’t moralistic or explicitly Christian. My late father, for instance, refused to read LOTR because it was fantasy. They would probably be deeply scandalized by Flannery O’Connor’s work, and not in a productive way. Not that every Christian has to be a literary scholar, but the collective Catholic imagination is in pretty dire straits these days. We need to do better! The tragedy of the modern publishing industry is that it is so driven by consumeristic reading, and the tragedy of the Christian publishing world is that so often the quality is ignored just because it paints faith in a positive light. It’s a contributing factor to why so many people aren’t capable of engaging with the hard realities of the real world or work towards understanding people who come from different circumstances.
I think we need to engage art at all levels, and that means talking about what's good and what's bad. But at the same time not dismissing it completely. I have always defended WRM in their books picks, even if I really dislike it, but I do think that this was probably their worst fail because of the length and by presuming women should read it in one month. This is not Anna Karenina or War and Peace, huge classics that deserve our time, this was a really misguidedly long, bad novel. And while I want WRM to not just have classics, I think that if they're going to choose a book that isn't quite at classic standards it should be shorter. I am going to presume that WRM is going to hear a lot of complaints as well they should.
This is just my second year doing WRM, and the selections have been a little hit or miss for me. What has been your experience of their picks? Have some years been better than others? I don’t expect everything to be to my taste, and it’s been good for me to read more widely again, but I’ve been a little disappointed.
I would say that this is probably my least liked year as well, and I've been in it for about ten years. I think with any book club the expectation shouldn't be that you're going to love every book, but that you have good discussion from every book and that most books are worth reading.
I’m actually really pumped about the other books! FT was just a huge whiff amongst other solid picks (Peace Like A River!, Lear, Pinocchio; I enjoyed The Pearl, and am re-reading Cry the Beloved Country which I really liked the first time I read it. And I usually like Gaskell so I have high hopes!)
No, the worst in my memory was Year of the Friend (soooo many awful friends!). 😆
I think this is my 3rd or 4th year, and this is probably the most hit or miss list so far. Usually the one “big” book they choose has been better.
What does WRM mean? Thanks!
Well Read Mom — a Catholic women’s book club
Thank you!
This is such a great articulation of why to read critically — as in analytically — at all. It’s not to bash books but to highlight what works or doesn’t and why, which makes it easier to identify books that really are good and move us.
I probably liked the book a little more than you, Christy, because I like Russian characters; I was moved by some of the stories but agree that there were just far too many to even remember. I had the (somewhat unpleasant) revelation sometime when he was in Russia, as I was getting frustrated with his internal spiritual, very circular journey that my spiritual journey is also quite circular and repetitive and so that part felt somewhat authentic to me. But I want a good book to move me beyond that, and this didn’t do it at all.
One more pet peeve: I didn’t like how Alex related to women at all. I get that Carol was the love of his life, but he romanticized their marriage so much and then was not able to relate to almost any woman in the book in a healthy way. Any thought about another woman was either a desecration of Carol’s memory or a jump into a new love and relationship. That felt weird to me and really like a mark of immaturity in him.
Final note — I totally agree that the jump to a Russian prison and water boarding and being captured by the Chinese was completely off the rails and felt like a completely
different book. The only thing I can think of that would justify is that he was using it to speak to Chinese Christians and let them know he is praying for them and sharing their plight with Westerners. The dedication at the beginning says “With love and gratitude to my sister in Beijing (who must remain unnamed, a flower of Christ in China), and to her spiritual children. And to the unknown martyrs of Russia and China, whose sacrifices will be revealed at the time of harvest.” I wonder if he was trying to slip a message past Chinese censors, thinking there was no way they would read all the way to the end of this massive book. I know that sounds farfetched, but Chinese censors missed some major anti-Communist elements of The Three-Body Problem and allowed it to be published in China because the author moved them to later in the story. That is literally the one reason I can think of to explain why Alex ends up in China at all.
I completely agree with the points you make! I don't mind if a spiritual journey is circular, but it is the writer's job to take the ordinary and make it compelling for the reader. Realism isn't an excuse for bad craftsmanship. His relating to women was infuriating, and I could have added that to my long list of grievances but I had to restrain myself. He was just such an annoying character with no redeeming qualities!
You eloquently summarized my precise feelings about this awful book. I kept thinking that it would eventually boomerang around and I'd have this ah-ha moment where I understood the point. No such luck. Only fury over giving up so much precious time (and money) to read this garbage.
I felt like we'd get at least a little bit of satisfaction somewhere, but nothing! And then to have him wrap up his whole son's experience in a few paragraphs sent me off the deep end!
This was fun to read! Thanks Christy!
Have you read any of O'Brien's other fiction? I read the Strangers and Sojourners trilogy and had very mixed feelings. It has been years so my memory is not fresh, but I do remember parts of it being compelling. But a lot of it (especially the parts set in modern and future time) felt way too dramatic and moralistic. The Catholicism felt way too in your face. And I completely agree about never wanting to hand it to a non-Catholic and expect them to take it seriously. I have always thought that maybe I was missing something because Peter Kreeft compares Michael O'Brien to Flannery O'Connor, Graham Greene, and Evelyn Waugh. And I respect Peter Kreeft. However your review of this book makes me think I might not want to read any more O'Brien.
I too was giggling at all of the offense at the "negative" Dickens talk on another corner of the internet. I love Dickens, and I still think it is an interesting conversation and was offended not at all!
Well, it’s important to remember that Peter Kreeft is a philosopher, not a literary critic. A lot of Christian/Catholic public intellectuals tend to be particularly awkward when they drift into things outside their professional area of expertise. Not that they should never comment on other subjects, but many of them could benefit from a better filter when they do.
That is a good point. I guess I just trust Kreefts other literature recommendations so I assume he has good taste. If you love Waugh, Greene, Flannery, and Dostoevsky then I trust your taste for other books too.
I guess I'm wondering what people that have read multiple O'Brien books think. Are some better than others?
Exactly. Kreeft’s field is not literature. I was more concerned that a Baylor Literature and Humanities professor gave it a glowing thumbs on the back. Not a good look for him!
Exactly. He's a philosophy prof, not a literature professor. I won't take his opinion on novels too seriously.
I've read some of Strangers and Sojourners and some of Father Elijah and hated them both I didn't finish. I basically only finished this book because people in my book club were getting cranky about people not finishing the books, and once I hated this so much I had to finish it so I could critique it fully! I love Peter Kreeft, but I think it's safe to say he's not a lit prof, he's a philosophy prof and maybe we shouldn't take his taste in novels too seriously.
I go up and down with Dickens, because as I'm reading him I can be screaming at how annoying he can be but at the same time absolutely love his characters and scenes. But to think he can't be criticized or have a discussion about his writing is so bizarre to me. And they weren't being negative!! I just felt like I was in some weird upside down because if people want negative they should come on over here and hear me talk about Michael O'Brien, you know?
I think it is an interesting point to say that Peter Kreeft can be a wonderful philosophy writer and prof and not be the best place to go for recommendations for literature. He may love the ideas in a novel, but that's not ultimately what a novel is for. A good novel has to be a good story.
I loved the way Karen Ullo described how they pick books for Chrism Press. I'm quoting badly here, but it was something along the lines of "You can have the best ideas in the world, but if it isn't a good story we aren't going to publish it."
(If you want to hear her actual quote it came out at Reading Revisited on the podcast in early January)
As for Dickens...I saw all the talk about how negative it was and then listened to the podcast and was surprised how I didn't find it very negative at all!
I appreciate your negative book talk. I find it hilarious and fun!
I love Peter Kreeft and I think he's brilliant and at the same time I think he can be wrong about this book!! Haha! I also think Michael O'Brien can be a very lovely and probably very holy man without thinking he's a classic novelist. We do not need to be amazing novelists in order to get into heaven, thank God! But yes, just because the content or themes of a novel are good doesn't mean that the book itself succeeds as a readable, enjoyable, good story. And it's ok for all of us to admit that!
Love it! Thanks for humorously leading me through more thoughts on the connection between virtue and art. I'm always here for your book reviews and thoughts!
I came on to say the same thing. I’ve only read Strangers and Sojourners and don’t remember hating it. Then again, I was a brand new Catholic, so it could be that I was just so thrilled to see Catholicism anywhere I could find it that I didn’t realize how bad the writing was. I hear things about Father Elijah and Island of the World from persons who generally have really good taste so I keep hoping this isn’t representative of the whole? Who knows. (Oh and the angst over podcasters not loving Dickens had been hilarious. 🍿)
Strangers and Sojourners was definitely my favorite in the series and I was wondering if it was because the setting was back in time. Is it easier to be nuanced about a time past? I'm truly asking because I don't know. I have heard good things about both of those books as well. I would love to hear more opinions!
The plot was slightly tighter in S and S. It was vastly shorter. It had far fewer characters to track. So in that sense, I think it was easier to digest as a reader. However, it definitely had the same writing flaws as Christy pointed out about FT (horrible dialogue, jumping all over in the plot, trying so hard to sound profound, or in general— telling, not showing!).
Thank you for this! I am struggling so hard through The Father’s Tale right now. I just want to be done. And I kept wondering if there was something wrong with me/maybe I was being too nitpicky. But looks like the problems I’m seeing are visible to others, and that helps so much
It was so painful to finish. And I was fuelled out of rage to write about it and it still felt like I was slowly being tortured for over 500 pages.
If I hadn’t bought it I would have given it up. And I want to at least getting the benefit of adding a book to my reading challenge rather than having wasted my time 😂
Haha, I know! It's those little things that kept us going! It is so annoying to buy a book then hate it.
Thank. You. Christy!!! The content I’ve been waiting for! I’m also confused about the decision to include this book in WRM and make all of us women endure this pain. It’s subpar writing— who cares if he’s Catholic? The biographical fallacy drives me nuts. But anyway, your last sentence was absolutely perfect and had me laughing hysterically. It was definitely a form of suffering. 😂
From the response I've gotten here and on instagram when I talk about the book I assume WRM is going to get a lot of negative blowback about this choice!
Christy, I just saw you quoted in a piece on The Dispatch! I’ve been a lurker on your substack for a while and just started commenting more recently but was really happy to see that.
Thank you! I am now The Dispatch famous!
hahaha I went looking for this and was happy to see it was written by Ivana! I love her so much.
https://thedispatch.com/article/moms-parenting-mental-load-celebration/
Ivana is the greatest.
The more I think about this book the more I hate it. It really seemed like he didn’t have an editor! Unless the book was 3000 pages long and they edited it down to this! I’m glad it’s not just me, it left me feeling somewhat unhinged
The more you think about it the worse it gets. It's really ridiculous.
Yasss. No better way to wake up on a saturday morning than finding this gem in your inbox. This book is so heavy handed! My parish priest said he read it last summer and loved it and that makes me.... judge him. I get it, most books are very openly hostile to Catholics and especially the clergy but this book is just so simplistic. And the Russians! I couldn't care less and Michael O'Brien clearly couldn't possibly care more about Russians. It's all too much! Thank you for your clear eyed, take-no-prisoners review!
I mean, maybe your priest has a similar problem with Peter Kreeft in that they simply don't read non-fiction so they think this is good??? That's the most charitable way I can look at it!
I appreciate that you are willing to talk negatively about a book! (especially one written by a Catholic author who some people absolutely love). I think it's important to be able to analyze books as we discuss them, and not just jump on the bandwagon of forcing ourselves to like a book because it's what WRM picked or because it's written by O'Brien. I recently attended the Catholic Writer's online conference, and at least one of the presenters talked about how we need to create high-quality literature and not just say, "Oh, well because a character/theme/story is Catholic, that makes it worth reading." I've never read The Father's Tale, but reading your review, I think my time would be better spent rereading Laurus by Vodolazkin (even if the plot or themes aren't identical, that book profoundly illustrates suffering and love and sacrifice and is so well-written!).
I agree, Laurus is a beautiful book and one with themes of fatherhood which are explored in much more depth and nuance than The Father's Tale. I don't like dumping on Catholic literature, but it has to be held to the same basic standards of any literature.
Yes, C. S. Lewis and Dorothy Sayers (Sayers especially!) were adamant about this! Art must be written for its own sake/end. As soon as you set out with a moralistic message it’s just…something else. But it’s not literature anymore. This happens so much right now on both sides of the aisle; didacticism in writing is a scourge of our time honestly!
Having just finished reading The Father's Tale, I will say that Laurus by Vodolazkin is everything that O'Brien's novel isn't. It is a beautifully crafted fundamentally Christian book! I highly recommend!
100% agree
The more I think about it, the more I wish that Well-Read Mom had picked Laurus instead. It beautifully and devastatingly depicts fatherhood gone wrong and then fatherhood redeemed.
I agree, the themes in that book are much more illustrative of a father's love through suffering than The Father's Tale was.
So true! It’s beautifully written and fits the fatherhood theme so well, much better than The Father’s Tale does. It’s a book I would read for a second or a third time. But The Father’s Tale… never again.
My WRM group meets Tuesday, but I’ve have the sense from some that the discussion is going to lean positive. I am not able to articulate the problems as well as Christy and you all, but suffice it to say there is too much navel gazing without enough growth for my taste, and Alex annoys me. If he were a real person in my life, I’d avoid encounters with him. I am half-way through, and now that I know it goes EXTRA off the rails with the spy storyline I’m going to stop now and not feel guilty.
The questions I have (because I am not super well read) are these: are there books/authors that infuse their writing with Catholic sensibilities and order without hitting you over the head? Are there books/authors that do hit you over the head, but somehow in a way that’s forgivable (like not being 1000 pages long, have lovely characters etc)?
I second The Power & The Glory by Graham Greene and Death Comes for the Archbishop by Willa Cather. Also, The Goldfinch by Donna Tartt, if you want to read recent fiction by (good) Catholic authors. The Goldfinch is dark and a little rough at times, but it is skillfully crafted and a beautiful story.
These are all really great recommendations, and I will say that usually WRM has great Catholic writers included in their reading lists.
Ooh! The Power and The Glory by Graham Greene. A thought provoking book with very complex characters, but not what I would call lovely characters. Sigrid Undset's Master of Hestviken series (must be the translation by Tiina Nunnally). Evelyn Waugh's Helena. Waugh's Sword of Honour Trilogy. Chesterton's The Man Who was Thursday is heavy handed and bizarre, but very enjoyable, in my opinion.
Edit: also Willa Cather's Death Comes for the Archbishop or Shadows on the Rock. Those really do have lovely characters. And Dostoevsky's Brothers Karamazov is long and heavy, but totally worth reading! Much more nuanced than Father's Tale.
Waugh’s Brideshead Revisted too! One of the best WRM picks last year
Brideshead is in my top 5 book favs of all time. Love it.
The End of the Affair by Graham Greene is one of my absolute favorites as well.
Thank you so much for saying this 😂. I felt like the odd man out because my book club leader loved the book and I found it to be... dreadful. And that's putting it mildly. Thanks for saying what I was thinking 😂
I can usually understand why people like books I don't like, but with this one...it is...tough!