Fergus, Weaver of Autistic Webs’s Reviews > Father Elijah: An Apocalypse > Status Update

Father Elijah’s friend, Monsignor Billy, has heard a heart-pounding revelation in Helsinki. The Beast is Big...

The dénouement of Elijah’s critical meeting with the radical leader of the European Parliament, filled with portentous small talk...

Cannon to right of ‘im
Cannon to left of ‘im
Into the Mouth of Hell
Rode Father Elijah!
(Apologies to Lord Tennyson)

Elijah’s dream of his murdered wife:
That night she came to him in a dream.... she was happy...
She offered the cup of her palms to him, and he saw within it a small child, asleep.
‘This is our daughter,’ she said in words that were soundless... she sleeps but her heart is awake....’
Elijah woke with the first light.

Which was the greater miracle, the suspension of natural law for the sake of physical healing, or the conversion of the human heart by absolute love?

This is wonderful reading. The book is suffused with O’Brien’s affable and childlike faith, and takes me back to a time in my own life - as in these descriptions of Assisi - when life, though perhaps cluttered and busy, permitted an ingenuous joy now so foreign to my current open, jarring world of bemused senior citizenry!

‘Onward to Mordor!’ shouted Billy.
‘Mordor? We’re going to Capri.’
‘A figure of speech, Davy....’

‘Real suffering is always different from
what we imagine,’ Elijah said... ‘Obedience is the best form of poverty, Billy. I think that is the kind of martyrdom you have been given.’
- Father Elijah, laconic Jewish convert to Catholic monasticism, talking to an old friend from Jerusalem.

A very, VERY good read. O’Brien weaves a compelling tale!