What makes The Vicar of Christ extraordinary is that it porves itself by paradox-reconciling and weaving together strong, seemingly incompatible elements into a cohesive, memorable work quite unlike any other in recent fiction.
Ambitious in length and scope, the stage is nothing less than the contemporary world, its recent history and prophecy; while the focus, fromseveral points of view, is clearly upon a single man-an American-who rises to become Bishop of Rome.
As a narrative, The Vicar of Christ both reclaims and extends a tradition as old as the novel itself, But it is nto only its epic design, its profundity as a psychological study, and the riddle it poses of tame and fortune and their place in politics that distinguish this story. There is, too, the mosaic of shardlike details, each meticulously exact, that makes the whole the unique sum of its parts.
The sweep of the novel carries Declan Walsh out of two wars and thrusts him into the bright center of the civilized world: the Supreme Court of the United States and later, the Curia of the Vatican-whose rival political factions, with their craft, false promises, and betrayels, are, in many ways, far more treacherous battlefields that the windswept hills of Korea.
Central to the implacable logic of the plot is the evolution of Walsh's character. Decorated in war and honored in peace, Walsh apears the brightest of stars until a personal tragedy unleashes the dark, turbulent forces of his divided self. Haunted by remorse and the ghosts of sacrificed loved ones-men and women-Walsh retires from the Court to a Trappist monastery: and act as absolute as it is sudden. Time passes. Restored, Walsh reemerges to become Francesco 1, destined to lead the Church and the world it serves with a willfulness and fierce determination that, from the beginning, has marked others of similar stature. As Francesco's shadow lengthens, The Vicar of Christ becomes a compelling account of the exercise of power and its awesome effects within the social contract.
Finally, while illuminating the fiber of contemporary life-and particularly its institutions-The Vicar of Christ simultaneously reaches far back into the past-not only to paint the ancient mysteries of the Vatican in chiaroscuro, but to touch the essence of the prototypical tragic hero. Mr. Murphy has produced a novel that, to use Van Wyck Brooks' touchstone, combines "breadth, depth, and elevation."
Ambitious in length and scope, the stage is nothing less than the contemporary world, its recent history and prophecy; while the focus, fromseveral points of view, is clearly upon a single man-an American-who rises to become Bishop of Rome.
As a narrative, The Vicar of Christ both reclaims and extends a tradition as old as the novel itself, But it is nto only its epic design, its profundity as a psychological study, and the riddle it poses of tame and fortune and their place in politics that distinguish this story. There is, too, the mosaic of shardlike details, each meticulously exact, that makes the whole the unique sum of its parts.
The sweep of the novel carries Declan Walsh out of two wars and thrusts him into the bright center of the civilized world: the Supreme Court of the United States and later, the Curia of the Vatican-whose rival political factions, with their craft, false promises, and betrayels, are, in many ways, far more treacherous battlefields that the windswept hills of Korea.
Central to the implacable logic of the plot is the evolution of Walsh's character. Decorated in war and honored in peace, Walsh apears the brightest of stars until a personal tragedy unleashes the dark, turbulent forces of his divided self. Haunted by remorse and the ghosts of sacrificed loved ones-men and women-Walsh retires from the Court to a Trappist monastery: and act as absolute as it is sudden. Time passes. Restored, Walsh reemerges to become Francesco 1, destined to lead the Church and the world it serves with a willfulness and fierce determination that, from the beginning, has marked others of similar stature. As Francesco's shadow lengthens, The Vicar of Christ becomes a compelling account of the exercise of power and its awesome effects within the social contract.
Finally, while illuminating the fiber of contemporary life-and particularly its institutions-The Vicar of Christ simultaneously reaches far back into the past-not only to paint the ancient mysteries of the Vatican in chiaroscuro, but to touch the essence of the prototypical tragic hero. Mr. Murphy has produced a novel that, to use Van Wyck Brooks' touchstone, combines "breadth, depth, and elevation."
