The Bishop's Man by Linden MacIntrye.✔✔✔

This year's winner of the Giller Prize, and a book I've waited all winter to read, The Bishop's Man is the story of Father Duncan MacAskill, who has spent most of his priesthood as the bishop's " clean-up man", the one who visits the priests who have been reported for their indiscretions and sends them away either for treatment or re-assignment.

As the novel opens, the bishop is sending MacAskill to a small parish called Creignish, quite close to Duncan's childhood home, the home where his mother died when he was four, and where his father, a bastard child, lived in bitterness because of his war-time experiences, as well as for his shadowy beginnings in life. This parish assignment is to get Duncan out of the way, where an enquiring reporter has been asking questions about Duncan's own investigations. But the questions still follow, and Duncan turns to alcohol to dull the thoughts which come more easily now that he has more time on his hands.

Initially, I thought the novel would be about the abuse and the church's role in it, but it is more the story of Duncan MacAskill: his life as a priest, his role in an incident in Honduras, his relationship with his sister, his dealing with young Danny Bad, and the ever-elusive priest, Brendan Bell, who finally appears on the scene in the book's final pages. It's probably the first book I've read describing the life of a priest - the loneliness of the calling pervades every page.

MacIntyre is an excellent writer and has crafted this novel extremely well, almost elegantly, you could say. It is very easy to read, it's not religious or spiritual in tone, it doesn't dump on the church, it just lets things unfold, and leaves it to the reader to involve herself in the character. It is, as I read in a review, a "character-driven" novel - it's not always easy to discern the time frame since he shifts around quite easily - but Dancan's character is interesting, challenging and memorable.

I would say this is one of my best reads of 2010 so far!