May 8th, 2011
by Kevin Holtsberry
Lumen (Captain Martin Bora) by Ben Pastor
Publishers Weekly
Mixing elements of a psychological thriller and an existential meditation, Pastor’s debut follows a German army captain and a Chicago priest as they investigate the death of a nun in Nazi-occupied Poland. Mother Kazimierza’s alleged power to see the future has brought her a devoted following; her motto, “
Lumen Christi Adiuva Nos” (“light of Christ, succor us”), gives the novel its title. In October 1939, Captain Martin Bora discovers the abbess shot dead in her convent garden. Father Malecki has come to Cracow at the pope’s bidding, to investigate Mother Kazimierza’s powers. Now the Vatican orders him to stay and assist in the inquiry into her killing. Meanwhile, the Germans are consolidating their hold on their Polish territory, dispossessing farmers, beating civilians and forcing Jews into labor gangs. Though stunned by the violence of the occupation and by the ideology of his colleagues, Bora never deviates from his Prussian duty. After three months, two suicides, much detective work and some speculation about Catholicism and faith, choice and chance, good and evil, Bora and Malecki discover the true story of the abbess’s death, which implicates Bora’s fellow army officers. Pastor’s examination of Bora and his colleagues illuminates the many contradictions of life in the service of a criminal state.
The narrative’s explications of Catholic belief and theology defy readers to reconcile faith, or inner light (lumen) of any kind, with the realities of the Nazi regime. Pastor’s plot is well crafted, her prose sharp, but her novel is meant to be more than light entertainment. She raises again the questions recently posed by
Bernhard Schlink‘s
The Reader: how can art explore the human side of a victimizer without seeming to forgive the unforgivable? Pastor’s disturbing mix of detection and reflection is a provocative though not definitive answer.
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February 22nd, 2011
by Kevin Holtsberry
The Popes of Avignon: A Century in Exile
Library Journal
Mullins, an Oxford-educated journalist and visual arts and architecture specialist, spans the intriguing 70 years of the Avignon papacy with this highly readable narrative. By grounding the story in the architecture and artistic elements of Avignon and the surrounding area, he draws readers into this fascinating period of the church’s “Babylonian captivity.” Mullins effectively demonstrates the effects of the papacy on the area by contrasting current and past architecture. Although two standard works on this period were translated in the late 1960s and early 1970s, Guillaume Mollatt’s The Popes at Avignon 1305-78 and Yves Renouard’s The Avignon Papacy, and although the triumphs and excesses of the 14th-century church are also well documented in general sources, this focused treatment is an excellent addition to church history collections. Suitable for academic and public libraries.
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