Be Near Me

When an English priest takes over a small Scottish parish, not everyone is ready to accept him. He makes friends with two local youths, Mark and Lisa, and clashes with a world he can barely understand. The town seems to grow darker each night. Fate comes calling and before the summer is out his quiet life is the focus of public hysteria. Father David looks back to find a Lancashire childhood. He remembers a lost father and a grand school for Catholic boys. He finds 1960s Oxford in the heat of student revolt and recalls a choice he once made in the orange groves of Rome. "Be Near Me" is a story of art and politics, love and change, and a book about the way we live now. Trapped in class hatreds, threatened by personal flaws, Father David begins to discover what happened to the ideals of his generation. Meanwhile a religious war is unfolding on his doorstep...

Andrew O'Hagan was born in Glasgow. He is the author of The Missing, which was shortlisted for the Esquire Award, the Saltire First Book Award, and the McVities prize for the Scottish Writer of the Year. His debut novel, Our Fathers, was shortlisted for the Booker Prize, the Whitbread First Novel Award, and the IMPAC Dublin International Literary Prize. His second novel, Personality, was published in April 2003. He lives in London.