In a key scene, Father Paul Michel's mother, devout throughout her life, but on her death-bed in Quebec, tells her son that she has lost her faith: there is no other life.Back on the Caribbean island of Ganae, Jeannot, whom Father Michel has raised from poverty to the priesthood, seems more concerned too with people's worldly suffering than their eternal souls, bringing him into conflict with state and Church, although even he is willing to sacrifice the lives of the poor to the cause of his revolution.Father Michel is the innocent, manipulated on all sides, looking back on "the empty pages of [his] life", rueing the missed opportunities: to have become a doctor, to have become a husband and father, to have made a genuine difference.His mother's realization that there is no afterlife haunts the book, raising questions about what it means to waste one's life and about what it means to be complicit, along with Church and state, in other people's suffering.This short novel by Brian Moore combines a gripping, fast-moving narrative with profound intelligence. Moore has many superb novels to his name. This is one of his masterpieces.
