Be Near Me

<p>Always trust a stranger said David's mother when he returned from Rome. It's the people you know who let you down. </p>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. </p>In this masterfully written novel Andrew O'Hagan explores the emotional and moral contradictions of religious life in a faithless age.</p></p>