ONE MORE SUNDAY - Book review

 

John D. MacDonald wrote many standalone novels, besides twenty-one books in his popular Travis McGee series. One More Sunday is one of them. Published in 1984, it concerns the Church of the Eternal Believer – a big fundamentalist business using all the tricks of the religious trade.

Reverend John Tinker Meadows is the leader now; Matthew, the founder, his father, is in the throes of dementia. ‘But the face was like a castle where once a king had lived, a castle proud and impregnable. But the king had left, the pennons were rags, the gates open, moat dry, and an old wind sighed through the empty corridors’ (p56). Alongside John is his sister Mary Margaret, strong and devout.

The New York Times considered the book ‘highly topical and controversial’. John’s sermon at the outset probably justifies that comment: ‘Once upon a time our nation was great. Now we sag into despair. The climate changes, the acid rains fall, the great floods and droughts impoverish millions, taking the savings of those who thought they could be provident in these times. We see all our silent factories, all the stacks without smoke, like monuments to a civilization past. Selfish owners refused to spend for modernization. Selfish unions struck for the highest wages in the world. We see rapist and murderers and armed robbers turned loose after a short exposure to that prison environment which gratifies all their hungers and teaches them new criminal arts. We see an endless tide of blacks and Hispanics entering our green land illegally, taking the bread out of the mouths of those few of us still willing to do hard manual labour’ (P11) – and so on...

Ray Owen is an investment broker taking leave from his work. He is trying to find his missing wife, Lindy, who had been writing an article on the Church of the Eternal Believer for her New York magazine Out Front.

Glinda Lopez works for the Church, using a voice synthesiser, imitating Matthew Meadows, and telephones Church members delinquent in their tithes.

Joe Deets is a computer nerd – and clever. He has programmed the computers to cream off some funds donated to the Church. He is also a sexual predator of young women. ‘There was a beast in a cage in the back of his mind, in the shadows, pacing tirelessly to and fro, showing only the glint of a savage eyeball, the shine of a predator’s fang’ (p43). He was presently indulging himself with Doreen, one of the Church’s ‘Angels’.

The Meadows family lives well, travels first class, and have their own jet planes. All thanks to the generous donations.

Within these pages you’ll find hypocrisy, greed, pathos, anger, murder, redemption and hope.

MacDonald masterfully presents a fairly large cast of characters, all individual, each with their own past and failings, their hopes and dreams.

Not much has changed in the last forty years since this was written.

Book review - The Towers of Trebizond

I’ve had this book in my library for about 33 years and have only now got round to reading it.

Rose Macaulay’s best-selling novel (her last, published in 1956) has a highly memorable and well-known beginning:

“Take my camel, dear,” said my aunt Dot, as she climbed down from this animal on her return from High Mass.

They’re in Oxfordshire, England, by the way.

The camel was a gift from a rich desert tycoon to Aunt Dot, the eccentric well-travelled Dorothea ffoulkes-Corbett. The book follows the adventures of the narrator, Laurie with her Aunt Dot and her High Anglican clergyman friend Father Hugh Chantry-Pigg (who keeps his collection of sacred relics in his pockets).  Aunt Dot, a member of an Anglo-Catholic missionary society, is determined to write a book about the women of Turkey, perhaps freeing them from ‘the Moslem treatment of women’. Father Chantry-Pigg was concerned that the men of the East were shocked by bare-headed and bare-armed women, since it ‘led to unbridled temptation among men.’ To which Aunt Dot responded, most sensibly, ‘Men must learn to bridle their temptations.’

Laurie points out that her family has a tenacious adherence to the English Church. ‘With it has come down to most of us a great enthusiasm for catching fish. Aunt Dot maintains that this propensity is peculiarly Church of England; she has perhaps made a slight confusion between the words Anglican and angling.’ (p9) Indeed, one of their relatives prepared sermons while fishing, believing his vocation to be a fisher of men.

There’s quite a lot about religion, poking fun at various aspects of the church, yet there’s an underlying concern for ‘the truth’ and ‘sin’. As can be seen, there’s wit aplenty; they always seem to be tripping over spies – ‘we saw so many British spies in disguised spying in Turkey…’ Father Chantry-Pigg was intent on converting the men from the Koran, ‘though he had his work cut out, since the second half of his name was a handicap with Moslems.’ (p40)

Their group is also following in the footsteps of a BBC radio crew, Seventh Day Adventists and followers of Billy Graham. As Aunt Dot says, ‘We shall all be tumbling over each other. Abroad isn’t at all what it was.’

Laurie’s state of mind is troubled by guilt. She embarked on an affair with a married man, Vere. This echoes her own life, as she carried on a 24-year affair with ex-priest and author Gerald O’Donovan until he died in 1942.

The narrator is not named as ‘Laurie’ until well into the book; this could have been corrected by inserting her name in the first sentence. Many paragraphs are a page or more long, and some sentences go on for a dozen or so lines, and the mystery that is religion is perhaps a little dated now. It is clear that it’s partly autobiographical, with excellent observation throughout, laced with wit and mischievous candour. Here’s a breathless sentence:

‘All these things Trebizond held for me, and I left Rize very early next morning to get there, and when at noon I came to Xenophon’s Camp and the Pyxitis, with its mouths spreading about into the sea, and the great mass of Boz Tepe ahead, and Eleousa Point, and the harbour bay at its foot where the fishing boats lay in deep purple water for the noon rest, and west of the harbour the white-walled, red-roofed town and the wood-grown height beyond it between the two deep ravines, where the ancient citadel stood in ruin, with house and gardens climbing up among its broken walls, I felt as if I had come not home, not at all home, but to a place which had some strange hidden meaning, which I must try to dig up.’ (pp108/109)

This is an amusing, humorous and enjoyable novel; it may have ruffled some religious feathers when published, now it might upset a few advocates of political correctness. Sprinkled within the travelogue are thoughts about love, sex, life, organized churches, religion, the ancient magicians of Trebizond, the confusion of mis-translation in a foreign land, the plagiarism of travel writers, a fixation with Circassian slaves, international politics, book reviewers, traitors and Bedawins (‘they sound dangerous when spelt like that’) (p154), the training of an ape to play chess and  croquet (‘a very good game for people who are annoyed with one another, giving many opportunities for venting rancour.’ (p188)

Rose Macauley died in 1958, aged 77.

Halloween-3 – become sacred dust

I got fed up waiting for a publisher to grab this book after it was out-of-print, despite the good reviews, so have self-published it as a paperback and e-book under the new title Chill of the Shadow. (amendment: 27/10/2017)

 In this partial chapter excerpt from Death is Another Life, we meet Maria’s antagonist – or will it be fellow protagonist? Unlikely, considering his behaviour. Still, vampires are known to mesmerize those they would seduce…

CHAPTER 2: An urgent hunger

A month ago

Zondadari never ceased to be filled with dread anticipation before the transformation.

            In the privacy of his secluded Maltese villa he stood on the stone balcony, dressed in black leather, his shoulders draped with a cloak of the same colour and material. Very theatrical, but appropriate. As the pains filled his chest and raked across his back, he hunched forward, his fingers grasping the stone hand-rail for support. Mediterranean fir-pine trees cast their deep velvet shadows onto the balcony, concealing most of the pale yellow moon. Shadows were his friend.
            Slowly the organic material of his clothing pressed against him, even into him, taking on the contours of his large muscular body. A straying wild bird flew over and shrilled and then darted away quickly, discouraged by the unholy smell that emanated from him during his change.
            One day, he feared, his heart wouldn’t hold out against the battering it took.
            Coherent thought shimmered. He started seeing double; then multiples of everything. Disoriented, he lowered himself down on one knee. It would be a few minutes more before he would be able to control the numerous images.
            Small gaping flesh-red mouths, with razor-sharp teeth, appeared on the surface of his body. Disproportionately large furry ears flicked out at all angles and black beady eyes glistened all over him, like a constellation of the devil.
            Five minutes of harrowing pain passed and already he was separating, literally coming apart. With an unpleasant sucking sound, dark shapes peeled off from the form that had been a man. But he was a man no longer.
            With a flick of thin yet deceptively strong leathery wings, the freed bats broke away from each other and landed on the balustrade.
            The shape-shifting was complete. His mind was the sum of these forty-six creatures. He could see through the eyes of a single animal or perceive separate images through all of them. They did his bidding – because they were him in every sense. Every sense.
            The hunger was upon him again.
            As one, the bats flew up into the night sky.

* * * *

His body aching in every bone, he straightened in the front pew and rubbed his strained eyes. Recovery from each transformation was the same: excruciating.
            He remembered his pains with a shiver; then gulped the revitalizing warm blood from the church’s golden chalice and licked red dribbles from fleshy lips.
            Ever so slowly, the draught would do its arcane work and heal the agonizing ache and give him new life. Not for the first time, Zondadari cursed Theresa. Still, there were compensations: and blood-lusting Desiree was just one of many.
            He turned in the high-backed wooden seat to eye Father Pont, sprawled lifeless at the base of the choir stalls. The fool’s vacant eyes reflected no beatitude at abruptly and prematurely meeting his Maker and perhaps because of this they stared at him accusingly. And with good reason. The poor man’s heart must have stopped for a fleeting second as he saw a cloud of bats swoop down from the belfry. Father Pont’s eyes were almost extended on stalks as he viewed the creatures in front of him clustering together, as if purposefully forming into a seemingly pain-racked leather-clad man. Suffused with agonizing pain, the man glared and then smiled, grabbing the nearest piece of silver to hand. The priest stayed rooted to the stone flags, an easy target. No wonder his eyes stared accusingly.
            Zondadari shrugged. Even after all these years, he wondered how he could have been taken in by such an empty religion. Of course, in those distant days, superstition reigned supreme.
            He stood and hung the plastic crucifix round his neck.
            In a moment he would drag the dead priest down to the catacombs to join his ancient brethren. With great will-power, Zondadari refrained from draining the blood from the priest; he would return for the rest later, a cool libation, after which the body would moulder and become sacred dust.
            Taking his time – of which he had plenty – he donned the dead priest’s round-brimmed hat. He paused to check his reflection in the shining silver ciborium, its rim smeared with blood and hair where he had clubbed the kappillan.
            He lifted his head, accentuating the line of his aquiline nose. His steely grey eyes shone mischievously. Quite the local vicar, he mused, but he still preferred to see himself in his ancient knight’s helmet.
            Licking the silver clean, he smiled. Today, he would have a little amusement.

HAPPY HALLOWEEN...!

This book is now out of print - until further notice...

NB – Kappillan is Maltese for parish-priest. I can recommend Nicholas Monsarrat’s The Kappillan of Malta.