Reviews

While Disch (The M.D.) adroitly lampoons the loonier aspects of Catholicism and the religious right, the scattershot story line and glut of secondary characters defuse the effect of his latest effort. Minneapolis priest Pat Bryce is plagued by a host of distinctly unholy problems, including a fondness for altar boys, the blackmail efforts of underworld types (who know of the good father's indiscretions) and involvement in a plot by a fellow priest and an anti-abortion group called Birth-Right to ensure that pregnant girls come to term by holding them hostage in a pseudo-medieval fortress. Bryce's severest affliction, however, is a tendency to assume the identity of a 13th-century bishop in the Inquisition. Disch is at his best in a series of morbidly comic‘and strangely plausible‘scenes which capture Bryce's assorted addictions and inability to control his downward spiral. But the story's momentum is deflected by minor characters who, despite their brief moment in the comic limelight, have little overall impact: only a concluding summation ties together the loose threads. While much of the humor here will appeal to Disch's fans, readers looking for a more balanced narrative may wish to turn to his earlier titles. Author tour. (Mar.)

If the Roman Catholic Church still issued its Index of banned books, this one would certainly find its way onto it. It is a wickedly funny, often scathing attack on an institution seen as too often more concerned about avoiding scandal than truly serving the needs of its constituents. Father Patrick Bryce is a pedophile unable, even after a stint at the famous Arizona "treatment" facility, to control his urges‘a fact that draws him inexorably into a world defined chiefly by physical and psychological torment. A mysterious young man blackmails the priest into submitting to the tattoo artist's needle. As an image of Satan takes shape on his chest, he begins to experience strange and very realistic nightmares in which he adopts the persona of a 13th-century French bishop who was a victim of the Inquisition. All the while he is supposed to be supervising, as part of his penance, a detention facility in which reluctant teenage mothers are forced to come to term by a pair of overeager right-to-lifers not averse to using violence to achieve their ends. As this black and biting fantasy careens toward its macabre denouement, it gives one pause to think‘especially in light of the recent shootings at abortion clinics. Recommended for collections of popular fiction.‘David Henderson, Eckerd Coll. Lib., St. Petersburg, Fla.