ANDREW O'HAGAN was born in Glasgow, Scotland. His previous novels have been awarded the Los Angeles Times Book Prize, the James Tait Black Memorial Prize, and the E. M. Forster Award.
PRAISE FOR BE NEAR ME"What a powerful writer Andrew O'Hagan has become . . . Be Near Me is an elegy, a love story, a document of an era, beautifully imagined and composed."--JOYCE CAROL OATES"As if it is not enough that Andrew O'Hagan can write like an angel, one has to add that he does it in the rare style of an intelligent angel. What a fine novel is Be Near Me."--NORMAN MAILER
Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize, O'Hagan's third novel features Father David Anderton, a proud descendant of Lancashire's Catholic martyrs, who undergoes his own ordeal when he transfers to the deprived parish of Dalgarnock. Though born in Edinburgh, he is perceived as an Englishman among Scots, an Oxford-educated wine sipper amid the ale-drinking unemployed, and a Catholic priest in an angrily Protestant town: "Northern Ireland was just across the water, and what Dalgarnock had was a briny dilution of Ireland's famous troubles, without the interest in votes, assemblies or breakable guns." Aware of all this yet politically na?ve, Father David alienates locals with his insistence on high culture and tentative support for the Iraq war. When he falls into an uneasy friendship with two teenage hoodlums-whose bracing portrayal make them recognizable to any teacher-the plot takes a predictable turn toward priests behaving badly and the ensuing small-town witch trial. Though that story has been told before, O'Hagan keeps both accused and accusers human and even noble. The most minor characters are drawn with truth and complexity, and O'Hagan's prose is stylistically dazzling, as crafted and lovely as the best poetry. Recommended for most collections.-Leora Bersohn, doctoral student, Columbia Univ., New York Copyright 2006 Reed Business Information.
PRAISE FOR BE NEAR ME "What a powerful writer Andrew O'Hagan has become . . . Be Near Me is an elegy, a love story, a document of an era, beautifully imagined and composed."--JOYCE CAROL OATES "As if it is not enough that Andrew O'Hagan can write like an angel, one has to add that he does it in the rare style of an intelligent angel. What a fine novel is Be Near Me."--NORMAN MAILER --
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