Defendants:
Andrew O'Hagan, author
Case for the defence:
Be Near Me tells the story of Fr David Anderton, a priest born in Edinburgh, schooled in England and now regarded by his Ayrshire parish as satan himself – not just English but a paedophile at that. Being an Oxford man this may be expected, but to the denizens of Dalgarnock – a clutch of Orangemen, chavs, dole lovers, working class snobs, and ghetto-wannabes – he's a cuckoo in the nest who on refusing to conform must be destroyed.
Anderton ultimately is, not for forcing choirboys to receive his offering but for an ecstasy-fuelled kiss of the class hard man. His 'friend' the Bishop tries and fails to rescue him, as does his cleaning lady and in the end Fr David goes his own way.
Witness statements:
"O'Hagan's work has always concerned itself specifically with Scottish identity, and more generally with the structures and ideas that hold societies together, and the frail bonds which hold individuals to the body of society. He is a writer of stern and bleak ambition, but with a tender concern for the people who find themselves adrift and inadequate - for their particularity, for the singularity of their broken stories. As often with this writer, digressions can seem to slow the narrative and divert it; a bit too much of those Proustians, perhaps, a bit too much dinner-table argument over political commonplaces. But in the end he turns the wanderings back to his central purpose. He is a fine stylist, a penetrating analyst, a knowledgable guide to high thinking and squalid living, as observant and funny about the townsfolks' violent quirks as he is about the affectations of his sad central character. Between the lines, everything fits. This is a nuanced, intense and complex treatment of a sad and simple story.
"Read it twice." - Hilary Mantel, The Guardian
"O'Hagan has the power and exactitude to take the measure of a politically inert ex-industrial society subsisting on the long-chewed bones of sectarian and ethnic prejudices. He writes with bracing clarity, as if the sentimental despoliation of realism by television's treatment of working-class life had never happened. Yet, although much contemporary writing seems myopic and trivial in comparison, Be Near Me is simply too short, as if scaled down from its true ambitions, provoking admiration and regret in equal measure." - Sean O'Brien, The Independent
Findings:
My informant, Agent Orange, alerted me to this crime and I'm glad that she did. Great writers can tell us a lot about what society was like before the the Atomic Wars glassed it. Mega City scientists have been unable to learn anything new about from this book. What evidence they have amassed through Greene, Burgess and Waugh, British Catholic males were to a man mopey, and, in most cases, repressed homosexuals. O'Hagan's work merely adds to this hypothesis.
O'Hagan reminds me of an old perp, Lynard Smokey, I hauled in for jaywalking – asked why he did it, he'd respond with a promising story he swore would explain all, only to stop and drop it just as it started to get interesting. Perhaps O'Hagan thinks that Fr David is too interesting to share the story with many others, but as the old saying goes, never trust a man who uploads his own picture to Wikipedia.
Be Near Me touches upon the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the paedophilia paranoia of the late-20th to early-21st century, and touches most of all celibacy, but like the priest with his brief kiss, he doesn't go all the way. I've been part of the Justice system for nearly 30 years and by now I can sniff a motive from even the most sealed of cases, but even I struggled to find a story in O'Hagan's work.
His style is pleasant enough, and while Judges are deservedly known as hard-hearted, even we know when a character is meant to get some sympathy, but I rooted no evidence out for this here. It's like listening to an old lady describing her lost cat – to her the cat is the source of sunshine and personality. To me it's just another sheet of paper and the foreboding I'm going to have to go over and detailed how we found Patch digesting in some alien's belly.
Verdict & sentence:
Andrew O'Hagan, for cliché I sentence you to three years in the isolation cubes, and for the crime of telling a meandering story you are to serve your sentence in chains. Let this be a lesson to others.
Hilary Mantel, for attempting to mislead a Judge I sentence you to a year in the cubes. To be served twice.
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