Gwen Moffat lives in Cumbria. Her novels are set in remote communities ranging from the Hebrides to the American West. The crimes fit their environment, swelling that dreadful record of sin in the smiling countryside cited by Sherlock Holmes.
The new pope is Irish, and he chooses to be known as Patrick, which is about the only choice he does make, except for the last. Everything else is taken out of his hands: by the cardinals, by genetics or – as the devout would have it – because it’s preordained.
The first ominous event occurs at a general audience in St Peter’s Square when, his bodyguards evaded, a woman launches herself at him and Patrick, disorientated, slaps her face in self-defence. The media goes into a feeding frenzy.
The assailant turns out to be his cousin, a woman driven mad by successive miscarriages. Patrick, humane and intelligent, forgives her, but the episode has made him question his own behaviour and motives, his feelings as a man. What purports to be an exercise in soul searching slips into something nebulous and incomprehensible that explodes in erotic dreams. Patrick is devastated.
In today’s world this raises no eyebrows, the reader being well aware that behind the catastrophes of war, famine and pestilence, the catholic church is suffering from its own peculiar problems of gay priests, paedophilia, transsexuals, reform of the abortion laws; the Vatican must be imbued with sex.
Virgin and Child is a fantasy but meticulous research, liturgical and anatomical, persuades us to accept it as based on facts. That Patrick should be served by venal ministers is an occupational hazard of high office; that his loyal secretary should be a young and ravishing archbishop is a fair literary device to counter balance the men out for his blood. But the plot is top-heavy: the build-up too long and slow, and permeated with revelations which are risible rather than shocking.
A novel to polarise readers. The pious will hate it, the feminists gloat; some will find the whole thing hilarious. A few may turn to Google and discover how Patrick, such a troubled virgin, could find solace in the Song of Solomon. One has to smile.
