Tuesday, January 22, 2008

Father Mike

There were clues aplenty that Father Mike wasn't the holy man he was cracked up to be, but did you ever suspect that he was such a scoundrel at heart?
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4 comments:

Erin said...

I had no clue. Even when I figured that the "kidnapper" on the phone was someone in the family, I didn't think of Father Mike. But I really enjoyed the following explanations of how disappointing his life had been, how his bitterness had festered.

2:15 PM, January 23, 2008
kc said...

I didn't see that coming at all, and I didn't even suspect a family member. It made a certain amount of crazy sense after his identity was revealed, but it totally blindsided me.

7:08 PM, January 23, 2008
rev amy said...

I didn't suspect Mike either and am not sure I am happy the author chose to wrap up his story in that way.

Is that pastoral bias? Not sure.

were there ways that Cal hinted to us of Mike's disgruntled feelings along the way? I remember reading about his wife's difficulties in being a priest's wife, and the flatness of his children's characters. But what clues did he give us that Mike also hated his life and would take such drastic measures in the end?

8:23 PM, January 28, 2008
kc said...

To me, Mike seemed like one of those guys who expected a lot of goodness to attach to him just by virtue of being a man of the cloth. It seemed to be a real ego trip for him, somehow, like people would automatically find him "important." And when the girl he wanted found him more dull than compelling, he couldn't quite believe it and never really got over it.

Remember when the looters were stealing during the riot, and Mike's wife said she might take a fur coat if she had the opportunity, and he yelled at her that that was stealing? (It was a funny scene, but I don't have the book here to cite). He seemed preoccupied with the state of other people's souls while his own was obviously withering.

11:25 PM, January 30, 2008

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