The Father's Tale: A Novel

The Father's Tale, by Michael O'Brien, is an impressive book to look at. It clocks in over 1000 pages and is not for the faint of heart.

It's a LOT of reading.

But wow! WHAT reading!

Here's literature in the modern day, a little slice of what Dickens might look like if he were writing now. These characters are richly written and real people.

I've never been to Russia, and before I read this, I would have thought it unlikely that I would ever go. O'Brien makes his story a journey, and while you may not feel that you need to know how everything looks, I didn't find it overwhelming or to be too much.

In other words, I loved the book.

On the surface, it's a good story. Dad finds out that son disappears, takes off for the first time ever from his small town and travels around the world. During his journey, he runs into all sorts of interesting folks and crazy adventures.

If you go a little deeper-which, really, you should, after investing all that time in reading it-there's more to be considered.

First, what is fatherhood? And when we consider ideal fatherhood-not what we have experienced in life, but what God intends-how do we get a clearer picture of God himself, God as our father?

While O'Brien has you wondering just what in the world is going to happen (and there was a point, near the end, when I was convinced I did have it figured out...and I didn't. Not at all.), he also forces you to do a bit of self-examination.

What does it look like to give it all to God? What does trust in God really entail?

Can I do that?

Or, if you're me: Are you serious?

If his characters were any less authentic, the story wouldn't work. I'd have walked away shaking my head, convinced there was no way any real-life person would undertake something so far-fetched.

I'm looking forward to reading other reviews of this book-I've kept myself a bit shielded from them, because I wanted to articulate my first thoughts before getting a dose of what other people were saying. This is the kind of novel that has life lessons in it, but that's not why you read it. Maybe there's a message in it, and maybe it is the parable of the prodigal son retold.

What I really loved was the story. Any message that was in it was like life itself: integrated into the very fabric of it.

Highly recommended, and one of my favorite reads this year.

Perhaps the best way to evaluate `The Father's Tale' is by applying the standard Flannery O'Connor laid out in her essay "The Church and the Fiction Writer." In that piece, O'Connor argued that fiction crafted "according to its nature" should "reinforce our sense of the supernatural by grounding it in concrete observable reality."

There is a fair amount of the supernatural in Michael O'Brien's book; regrettably, it fails to serve truth. This is primarily because the plot is a confusing jumble of brooding introspection, international intrigue, rambling side stories, and deus ex machina. One might argue that these shortcomings don't matter, since O'Brien is writing for a primarily Catholic audience when he includes bits and pieces of Church practices and mystical encounters with Christ and the Blessed Virgin. If so, he is doing them a disservice. By ignoring Flannery O'Connor's admonition to not reduce the conception of the supernatural to a pious cliché, it is doubtful `The Father's Tale' can stand the test of time as serious literature.

The reason for this has less to do with the book's premise, which is well-conceived, and more to do with its structure. As one delves deeper into the plot it becomes plain that reality is distorted by a blatant sentimentality that places Grace entirely within the province of the good. One doesn't necessarily need to relate to the reality portrayed in fiction, but the writer succeeds if the reality is at least recognizable. Despite the vivid settings of `The Father's Tale,' what transacts in the story is simply not plausible.

Readers familiar with O'Brien's work are no doubt aware that he proceeds from an essentially Manichean worldview befitting of an ascetic. He employed this worldview to great effect in the novel `Father Elijah,' which dealt with the beginning of the apocalypse and necessarily categorized characters and situations as good or evil. This time, however, in the confines of a more conventional work--and let us here posit that `The Father's Tale' is not a work of fantasy, sci-fi, or apocalypse, but general fiction--the worldview causes the book to suffer from several serious handicaps.

Chief among these is the treatment of characters. Most seemed childishly one-dimensional. The good are pure, innocent and worthy of our unquestioning admiration; those that are not good are portrayed as sinister, insensitive and unfeeling: beyond redemption. There is very little gray area. Not surprisingly, dialogue is stilted and generally plays out in two modes: unconvincing casual banter and long-winded lecturing. Inauthentic, for the most part. An ascetic's conception of dialogue? Perhaps. On the other hand, a conversation between two ascetics in the desert--say, Saints Athanasius and Pachomius--would probably seem familiar to us because of its plainness.

O'Brien's intolerance for character development is manifest in that he fails to present characters that desire to be good but fall short. There's a certain stylistic priggishness that saps the pleasure out of reading the book. This stands in marked contrast with other writers of the genre. The genius of Flannery O'Connor (`Wise Blood') and other Catholic writers--Walker Percy (`The Last Gentleman'), Evelyn Waugh (`Brideshead Revisited'), and Oscar Hijuelos (`Mr. Ives' Christmas'), to name a few--is the effectiveness with which they portray souls in distress; men and women steeped in the grittiness of life, sinners capable of committing acts of mercy. Stated another way, these writers have the ability to laugh with sinners while O'Brien cries with saints. But there's more to it than that: sinners cry, too; and it is their pain, their dark nights of the soul on the gravelly road toward grace that make for timeless fiction.

Michael O'Brien's motives in bringing Catholic sensibilities to modern fiction are undeniably pure. He has few peers as a writer, essayist and artist. But the sure-footedness that served him so well in `Father Elijah,' and, to a certain extent, `Theophilos,' is nowhere evident in `The Father's Tale.' The writer's identity as a Catholic--whether it is O'Brien or someone else--does not excuse him from attending to the elements that comprise credible fiction. Failure to do so would, to paraphrase Shelby Foote, demonstrate that the minds of Catholics are in full retreat. Placed in the context of a miasmic swamp of schlock that laughingly passes for literature these days, it's imperative that Catholic writers redouble their efforts to produce transcendent work.

Perhaps the best way to evaluate `The Father's Tale' is by applying the standard Flannery O'Connor laid out in her essay "The Church and the Fiction Writer." In that piece, O'Connor argued that fiction crafted "according to its nature" should "reinforce our sense of the supernatural by grounding it in concrete observable reality."

There is a fair amount of the supernatural in Michael O'Brien's book; regrettably, it fails to serve truth. This is primarily because the plot is a confusing jumble of brooding introspection, international intrigue, rambling side stories, and deus ex machina. One might argue that these shortcomings don't matter, since O'Brien is writing for a primarily Catholic audience when he includes bits and pieces of Church practices and mystical encounters with Christ and the Blessed Virgin. If so, he is doing them a disservice. By ignoring Flannery O'Connor's admonition to not reduce the conception of the supernatural to a pious cliché, it is doubtful `The Father's Tale' can stand the test of time as serious literature.

The reason for this has less to do with the book's premise, which is well-conceived, and more to do with its structure. As one delves deeper into the plot it becomes plain that reality is distorted by a blatant sentimentality that places Grace entirely within the province of the good. One doesn't necessarily need to relate to the reality portrayed in fiction, but the writer succeeds if the reality is at least recognizable. Despite the vivid settings of `The Father's Tale,' what transacts in the story is simply not plausible.

Readers familiar with O'Brien's work are no doubt aware that he proceeds from an essentially Manichean worldview befitting of an ascetic. He employed this worldview to great effect in the novel `Father Elijah,' which dealt with the beginning of the apocalypse and necessarily categorized characters and situations as good or evil. This time, however, in the confines of a more conventional work--and let us here posit that `The Father's Tale' is not a work of fantasy, sci-fi, or apocalypse, but general fiction--the worldview causes the book to suffer from several serious handicaps.

Chief among these is the treatment of characters. Most seemed childishly one-dimensional. The good are pure, innocent and worthy of our unquestioning admiration; those that are not good are portrayed as sinister, insensitive and unfeeling: beyond redemption. There is very little gray area. Not surprisingly, dialogue is stilted and generally plays out in two modes: unconvincing casual banter and long-winded lecturing. Inauthentic, for the most part. An ascetic's conception of dialogue? Perhaps. On the other hand, a conversation between two ascetics in the desert--say, Saints Athanasius and Pachomius--would probably seem familiar to us because of its plainness.

O'Brien's intolerance for character development is manifest in that he fails to present characters that desire to be good but fall short. There's a certain stylistic priggishness that saps the pleasure out of reading the book. This stands in marked contrast with other writers of the genre. The genius of Flannery O'Connor (`Wise Blood') and other Catholic writers--Walker Percy (`The Last Gentleman'), Evelyn Waugh (`Brideshead Revisited'), and Oscar Hijuelos (`Mr. Ives' Christmas'), to name a few--is the effectiveness with which they portray souls in distress; men and women steeped in the grittiness of life, sinners capable of committing acts of mercy. Stated another way, these writers have the ability to laugh with sinners while O'Brien cries with saints. But there's more to it than that: sinners cry, too; and it is their pain, their dark nights of the soul on the gravelly road toward grace that make for timeless fiction.

Michael O'Brien's motives in bringing Catholic sensibilities to modern fiction are undeniably pure. He has few peers as a writer, essayist and artist. But the sure-footedness that served him so well in `Father Elijah,' and, to a certain extent, `Theophilos,' is nowhere evident in `The Father's Tale.' The writer's identity as a Catholic--whether it is O'Brien or someone else--does not excuse him from attending to the elements that comprise credible fiction. Failure to do so would, to paraphrase Shelby Foote, demonstrate that the minds of Catholics are in full retreat. Placed in the context of a miasmic swamp of schlock that laughingly passes for literature these days, it's imperative that Catholic writers redouble their efforts to produce transcendent work.

I simply can't understand this. I got through this entire book, from page 1 to page 1075, and I can only find a couple things about it that speak well of it, so I may as well list them right now.

First, this book stands by the church's teaching on abortion and even contraception (a rare, praiseworthy example of courage and honesty in today's world,) and several other teachings. Secondly, it doesn't come across as ridiculously-pushy about the points (moral and otherwise) that it makes. Oh, sure it does make those points, and it makes them clearly, but pretty much every book you read nowadays has a message to deliver. Compared to most books, for example, with atheist messages, this book is positively subtle.

These things, as far as I can tell, are the only things this book gets right.

I could literally spend all day recounting to you my lists and lists of the ways in which this book fails (for a more complete evaluation of the book's failings, google the word "awfulganza." You'll find my blog reviews quickly.) but for the purposes of this review, I feel I should summarize the book's problems as best I can.

The book's plotline starts slowly, first off. -Very- slowly. When it finally does begin, it comes across as a very boring game of "Where in the World is Carmen Sandiego," except with irrelivent subplots tossed in at regular intervals. However, the filler gets thicker as the story continues, and Alex; the main character, is lost in Siberia. Suddenly, the whole son-finding main plot just kind of disappears, and the story becomes one long filler arc. This continues for hundreds of pages, until he's mercifully kidnapped. However, this also leads to the low point of the story; pointless interrogation and torture scenes, which apparently drive Alex insane, because his dialogue becomes even less comprehensible at this point. Finally, the tale ends in a way which, as I see it, is just total fail, because it means that the vast majority of what Alex went through in the story contributed nothing to the main plot and didn't get him any closer to his ultimate objective. Oh. And the bad guys get away. Fun, huh?

Most of the story, such as it is, consists of irrelivent characters and subplots, which appear from nowhere and vanish just as quickly, and I didn't find any of the characters to be all that likable either, because two thirds of the characters are unremarkable; failing to be particularly unusual or interesting people, and two thirds of them are depressing; failing to accomplish anything particularly interesting (the two two-thirds overlap.) Plus, there's one character in particular (Aglaya,) who may be the single most annoying character in all of literature. I'm not kidding.

This book did have some problems with church teaching, such as some confusion over what love is, the whole notion of blood dissolving frontiers (it doesn't,) its somewhat myopic understanding of martyrdom and such, but I'd say the one problem in this area that I thought was worse than the others was the author's tendency to sound like he's pushing pacifism as part and parcel with Catholic Church teaching, which is simply dishonest, since Jesus himself wasn't a pacifist.

The book is intensely-boring; as most of it consists of the life stories of boring people. It's surprisingly-vapid, since its characters rarely say anything terribly shocking or unusual. It meanders from one thing to the next in a jagged line, as though determined not to follow any kind of rule of story structure, and with respect to its ability to deliver an enjoyable reading experience, the book is simply a train wreck. It fails in nearly all levels.

I could probably go on for paragraphs about any of these failings, or about the reaction the book has gotten; the positively dishonest comparisons to the prodigal son, to Tolkien, Lewis, Chesterson, Dostoyevsky, etc, the accolades it's received from notable modern authors (one of whom is Peter Kreeft. Make of that what you will,) but to be perfectly honest, I even think the book's basic premise; a Catholic novel that's "grounded," is flawed. You see, when we use our imaginations fully, we train our minds to remember our futures, and what we want from them. We remind ourselves that we are deathly afraid of certain things happening to us, and want desperately to prevent them from happening. We remind ourselves that there are things we want; things that this world is not capable of providing us with.

Perhaps most importantly, we remind ourselves that this world is not all there is; there is a world beyond this one; a world where dreams can come true, and where fears exist only as a sort of thrill in wondering what wonderful thing is going to happen next. Then, too, there's the dark world; where all hope is banished, and fear and agony reign supreme. In short, Heaven and Hell; the most basic understanding of Christian dogma.

The rest of the world can be "grounded," but if stories are "grounded," they lose the very thing that gives them their appeal; the power to elevate the mind to higher things than those of this life. This is the reason why I say that "grounded stories" are simply conceptually flawed.

What did this book take from me? I mean, aside from about a month of my free time? Well, certain parts were truly agonizing and painful to read; such as the interrogation scenes, the torture scenes, any of Aglaya's dialogue, the way Yevgeny fills up pages and pages with his life story, despite having been dead for years, etc... Aside from what I mentioned at the start of this review, I can't see a single thing to speak for it. In fact, I sort of had to fight back the urge to call this review "what is -wrong- with you people?!"

Still, some people liked it, I guess. I can't see how. This book's premise wouldn't be worth ten pages; much less over a thousand and seventy. Still, if you think you've found some incredible thread of genius here that I missed, let me know. All I know is, my memories of this book will probably remain pain, suffering, agony and the despair of futility; and that's just how I felt while reading it.

This was just another great novel in a string of books by a wonderful Catholic author. O'Brien's characters pull you into the story and just carry you along. The author imparts solid Catholic practices and ways of thinking without being preachy.

It is big to be sure. I am a fan of the author. I have read nearly all his books. This is not my favorite. The book had a good pace until he hits Siberia. I kept reading and saying to myself, "Ok...where is the son? Get back to the search for the son." After reading the book I can say I never want to visit Russia, maybe England.

You know the kind of book that you just enjoy and want more and more of.....well this is it....I am totally hooked on this awesome Catholic author and this book was the start of it all....he writes so well. This was a deep book that made you think, ponder God and realize a bigger picture....loved every page of it!

The author is seeking to take "western readers" along with him, through the main character, to the "east"... to teach us, in the West, many lessons... to break our heart... to reveal our heart... this book is a novel... but it is so much more...

Every one of his books are excellent reading - interesting stories and characters with theology woven into the background.

This book was fabulous. Yes, it's 1,000 pages but every page in this book was filled with intrigue yet touched the depths of my soul. When Michael O'Brien writes a book you feel like you are right in the room with the character, you feel what the person is feeling and you can't put the book down. I am a busy person and could only read a few pages nightly. I couldn't wait to for my work to be finished to pick up the book again. I recommend ALL of Michael O'Brien's books. You won't be disappointed. His books will stay on my bookshelf always only lending them out to friends who I know will return them. God bless you Michael and may you keep writing good books.