Clerical Errors

(Paperback)

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Description

'Alan Isler is brilliant-The wit is sumptuous and sophisticated, the timing and pace perfect' Daily Telegraph Edmond Music, Catholic priest and director of Beale Hall research institute, has a secret- he doesn't believe in God. And that's not all. For the past forty years he has shared a bed with his housekeeper, Maude Moriarty from Donegal. In fact Edmond Music isn't even Edmond Music. He's Edmond Music, French child of Hungarian parents - and a Jew. As he sees out his days in his Shropshire mansion, devoting his time to kabbalistic studies, his buried pasts threaten to end the charade. Fred Twombly, professor of English from Joliet, Illinois, and half-century-long enemy, has arrived, determined to destroy him. What may be Shakespeare's lost masterpiece has disappeared from the Hall's famous library. Edmond must be to blame.

Reviews

A delightful mix of both wit and profundity. The combination of rich vocabulary, a decent plot, and Isler's unnerving ability to assume the identity of his characters can't help but result in a novel you'll wish was longer! * Time Out *
Alan Isler, as usual, manages to combine almost Wodehousian comedy with painful, unsentimental tragedy * Sunday Times *
A superb new comic novel... wildly funny... Like the stories of Malamud and Singer one senses that the true hero of Clerical Errors is the story itself * Independent on Sunday *
Terrifically funny. Isler has once again come up with a winning voice for his narrator, by turns witty, bawdy and lugubrious * Financial Times *
A rich, rambunctious novel * The Times *

Author Bio

Alan Isler was born in 1934. He emigrated to the USA in 1952, where he taught at New York's Queen's College from 1967 to 1995. He is the author of two previous novels - the first of which, The Prince of West End Avenue, reached the last twelve for the 1995 Booker Prize - and one collection of novellas.