A Novel.
AN Wilson has written a wickedly savage satire on the morality of contemporary Britain. At times shocking, at times tragic, brilliantly observed, it does for today what Evelyn Waugh did for the thirties and Tom Wolfe's 'Bonfire Of The Vanities' did for the eighties.
So it was that within minutes of Father Vivyan's soul leaving his body and soaring God alone knows where . . . the silence of that religious house was broken . . . They could hear the coarse accents of Lennox Mark shouting, "Don't you realise - you cunt - don't you realise who I fucking am?"
Had Father Vivyan been killed by his own pride and fanaticism; by his belief that he could "save" a dangerous and mentally unstable boy? Had he been killed by his own fanatical posture, his alliance with those whom the rest of the world saw as terrorists? Or had he been destroyed by the popular Press and in particular by the proprietor of 'The Legion', Lennox Mark?
Perhaps by a bit of all those things.
AN Wilson has written a savage satire on the morality of contemporary Britain - its Press, its politics, its Church, its rich, its underclass. His London is a bleak, if occasionally hilarious, place: murderous, randy, money-obsessed and haunted by strange gods.
