Be Near Me

A Novel

Andrew O'Hagan

• Publisher: Mariner Books
• Year: 2008
• Print ISBN:
  9780156033961
• eBook ISBN:
  9780547537221
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Literature General
• Index: Literature

An English priest adrift in Scotland becomes the target of his own parish in this "nuanced, intense and complex [novel] . . . Read it twice" (Hilary Mantle, Guardian, UK).
"Always trust a stranger," said David's mother when he returned from Rome. "It's the people you know who let you down."
Half a life later, David is Father Anderton, a Catholic priest with a small parish in Scotland. He befriends Mark and Lisa, rebellious local teenagers who live in a world he barely understands. Their company stirs memories of earlier happiness—his days at a Catholic school in Yorkshire, the student revolt in 1960s Oxford, and a choice he once made in the orange groves of Rome.
But their friendship also ignites the suspicions and smoldering hatred of a town that resents strangers, and brings Father David to a reckoning with the gathered tensions of past and present. In this masterfully written novel, Andrew O'Hagan explores the emotional and moral contradictions of religious life in a faithless age.
Longlisted for the Man Booker Prize

Table of contents

• Title Page
• Table of Contents
• Copyright
• Dedication
• Epigraph
• Prologue: January 1976
• Sundial
• The Mouth of the River
• Mr Perhaps
• Ailsa Craig
• Schoolboy on an Elephant
• The Nights
• The Economy of Grace
• Balliol
• The People
• The Echo of Something Real
• Kilmarnock
• The Single Life
• About the Author