Another great one from Burgess. Opus, of the magnum type.
Spoilers:
I guess I'd put this one into the priest story along with the two J.F. Powers novels, Greene's The Power and the Glory. Although the priest of Earthly Powers isn't the protagonist, he certainly is a central character and frankly the reason for the protagonist to tell the reader about his (the protagonist's) life.
Carlo Campanati, as Pope Gregory XVII, is being considered for canonization. The Church has come to Ken Toomey, famous author, playwright, librettist, to research and write in favor of his sister's brother-in-law's sainthood. He knows through direct experience that Carlo had, possibly, cured a child of tuberculosis. But, we have to learn about Toomey first.
From the very first line, (one of the best in literature, IMHO) the reader knows what sort of person Toomey is:
It was the afternoon of my eighty-first birthday, and I was in bed with my catamite when Ali announced that the archbishop had come to see me.
Old, gay, somehow connected to the Catholic church. The book is full of Toomey's liaisons, along with name-dropping other authors, actual real-life authors (Toomey is modeled on Somerset Maugham) and their sexual lives. But Toomey's sexual orientation is not the main point of the story, except that Carlo prays that Toomey will someday "give up" his way of life for the health of his soul.
I seriously can't imagine how long it took Burgess to write this one (I will research this) and how much of his wall was used to map out the story. So many intertwined lives in these 600+ large-sized, small-fonted pages. The vocabulary. I can't remember the last time I had to look up so many words (shofar, pedicate [don't look that one up at work], endogamy, cecity, tonitruate, crapulous, inesculent). Words, words, wonderful words. Always the right one for the situation.
The child which Carlo cured, orphan, dying alone down the hall from Carlo's brother, also dying, would become a David Koresh or Jim Jones type cult leader. Like many of the characters in the book, this Godfrey Manning (who goes by the name God), is connected to Toomey in the form of Toomey's great- (or grand-) niece, Evie. You can guess the end: All God's almost 2000 followers die a horrible death while their leader is arrested trying to escape the country. And of course, Godfrey Manning was the little boy which Carlo had miraculously cured. (Toomey, after the archbishop in charge of the canonization of the late Pope decides to not include this info, suggests that it become part of the Devil's Advocate input. That idea is declined.)
Spoilers above ^^^^
Loved the book. This is my fifth, not including his 99 Novels. I will be reading more.
