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Pastoral cover art

Pastoral

Written by: André Alexis
Narrated by: André Alexis
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Publisher's Summary

Shortlisted for the Writers' Trust of Canada Fiction Prize
One of The Globe and Mail's Globe 100: Best Books of 2014

There were plans for an official welcome. It was to take place the following Sunday. But those who came to the rectory on Father Pennant's second day were the ones who could not resist seeing him sooner. Here was the man to whom they would confess the darkest things. It was important to feel him out. Mrs. Young, for instance, after she had watched him eat a piece of her macaroni pie, quietly asked what he thought of adultery.

André Alexis brings a modern sensibility and a new liveliness to an age-old genre, the pastoral. For his very first parish, Father Christopher Pennant is sent to the sleepy town of Barrow. With more sheep than people, it is sleepily bucolic - too much Barrow Brew on Barrow Day is the rowdiest it gets. But things aren't so idyllic for Liz Denny, whose fiancé doesn't want to choose between Liz and his more worldly lover Jane, or for Father Pennant himself, whose faith is profoundly shaken by the miracles he witnesses - a mayor walking on water, intelligent gypsy moths, and a talking sheep.

©2014 André Alexis (P)2017 Coach House Books
Philosophy Genre Fiction Literary Fiction
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What the critics say

"This novel's pleasures indeed include a rich sense of place, but that sense comes without sentimentality, and that place is something one might just as easily flee from as call home. Pastoral beauty is certainly on offer, but Alexis' fluid, evocative descriptions of the rural wonders that surround Barrow are much more than nostalgia for a childhood idyll or mere reverie for revere's sake - they constitute the very heart of Pastoral's unresolved/unresolvable crisis of faith." (National Post)

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Profile Image for Michael J. Cox

a wonderful respite from the pandemic

Here's a novel which takes place in a fictional small Ontario town, whose new priest is tested by people and possibly God, a novel of sublime moments, read by the author; if you want to hear something that takes you away to "greener pastures" but which also is a richly rewarding story of how we test ourselves (religious and non, alike) this is the book to get. I'm halfway through and loving it.

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Profile Image for Linda

Great characters

Lovely story with interesting characters. I enjoyed it and was sad when it came to an end

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