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Father Joe, Tony Hendra
Penguin
Reviewed by Jan Treliving-Brown (Courtesy of Taranaki Daily News)
Father Joe. Everybody I know will be getting a copy for Christmas. If you enjoy the sensation of being moved by an emotionally and spiritually charged book, let Father Joe in.
Is it a biography? It's more a profound treatise on life, faith and friendship. Author Tony Hendra, not so well known downunder, gives a pretty frank account of his life from Cambridge Uni days to editing National Lampoon and Spy magazines, to New York and the film industry.
The book begins: "How I met Father Joe: I was fourteen and having an affair with a married woman." That they are both Catholics presents a challenge, and surprisingly it is the wronged hubby who introduces young Tony Hendra to Benedictine monk Father Joseph Warrilow. This boy needs salvation.
And so begins a lifelong walk together – wilful, passionate, obsessive Tony – and Father Joe:
"For more than forty years, since I was not much more than a boy, this lumpy gargoyle of a man has been my still centre, the rock of my soul, as steady and firm as the huge oak on the curve of the hill where the monastery stands, the hill that runs down to the sea."
Enchanted by life at the Quarr Monastery, Tony sets his heart on a future in the priesthood. Father Joe demurs. In Tony he sees classic husband-and-father material. Tony is both gutted and confused: "I was always somewhat baffled that this monk, who had never slept with man or woman, who had confined himself in a cloister in late puberty, could know and feel so much about a matter he'd taken a strong vow to know not ... He preached – brilliantly – what he could never have practised."
Drink, drugs, a failed marriage with kids do not shake Father Joe's vision for Tony one iota, though oftentimes Tony is distraught as he presents himself at Quarr, and at the feet of his rock – God in human form – Father Joe.
This book is sensational, almost overwhelming in its depth. Weeks later I'm still thinking about it.