Here's a nice review of the last in Michael O'Brien's "Children of the Last Days" series. It's the direct prequel to Father Elijah, which, Star-Wars like, was the first of the 6 books published, but the last in chronological order. Of the 6, I think this one is my favorite. I loved Fr. Elijah when I first read it --couldn't put it down-- but I just finished re-reading it and it seems a little dated now. It's not really O'Brien's fault. He wrote Fr. Elijah in th 1990's; I remember him saying that he envisioned it taking place "15 minutes into the future." What struck me most on the re-read was that it's a great testimony to JPG's pontificate. At the time it was written, it wasn't clear whether JP's "springtime of evangelization" was a prophecy or a wish, and many vile things that seemed very plausible then are --thanks largely to JPG-- rather implausible now. (Also, thanks to email and blogs, the type of over-weaning conspiracy Fr. Elijah depicts is no longer possible, thanks be to God). Still very worthwhile reading for other reasons, but the plot seems already dated.
Sophia House, on the other hand, takes place in Poland during WWII, and it tells the story of Pawel Tarnowski, a Polish painter and bookstore owner who ends up taking in the young Jewish refugee who will grow up to be Fr. Elijah. Sophia House is the Warsaw bookstore the boy stumbles into, and the two live there --hider and hidden-- as WWII rages all around them. I have some gripes with O'Brian about two things. A, he needs an editor. Some of the conversations do go on (some of the ideas you read about in the review --the nature of art, symbol, language-- are treated in the novel. Too often in long conversations between the two protagonists). B, he has no understanding of the political dimension of the human person. He understands "politics" in the perjorative sense frighteningly well; but the political order in his novels is either absent or always and solely a vehicle of evil. He doesn't see its power to mediate extremes, the way laws influence character, etc., and I believe this lack of understanding makes his vision darker than it need be.
These slight flaws aside, however, no one is better than O'Brien at describing the interior struggle between light and dark, the bitter internal crosses we all carry, what the Eucharist is, the spiritual life, or the power of forgiveness. Sophia House sets up a Confession scene in Fr. Elijah that is one of the most powerful scenes I have ever read in any literature of any kind. And what I absolutely bless O'Brien for is his ability to write about Catholicism the way it is --the way we live it-- as if it were something important & alive right now. In much of the Catholic literature we now admire --I have Evelyn Waugh particularly in mind-- Catholicism is rather arch. You know how people who admire the Confederacy are fond of saying "the only causes worth fighting are lost causes?" That's the sense you get from the favored Catholic novels --that Catholicism is a beautiful lost cause. I like Waugh, too, don't get me wrong, but O'Brien's vision is of something pulsating with life, and he knows the whole point of Christianity is that the cause is already won.
