- Hardcover: 240 pages
- Publisher: Scribner (Jan 3 2012)
- Language: English
- ISBN-10: 1451636814
- ISBN-13: 978-1451636819
- Product Dimensions: 20.6 x 12.7 x 2.5 cm
- Shipping Weight: 295 g
- Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: #956,724 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
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Product Details |
Product Description
Review
“Kay lays out a moving consideration of devotion and loss.” —New York Times Book Review
“What begins as the small mystery of one woman’s vision (ordelusion) explodes into a deeper story about how people cope with grief andloss.” —The Washington Post
“Fiercely lyrical yet exceedingly tough-minded…stark andunforgettable.” —Chicago Tribune
"You do not need to share the beliefs of Kay’s characters to be deeply affected by their stories….skillfully constructed and beautifully written book, which is as much concerned with common humanity as it is with individual faith.” --The Sunday Times
“If Francesca Kay’s second novel were a piece of music, it would be a requiem, finding the poetry, perhaps even the glory, in loss and despair. Which is not to say that her novel is depressing or gloomy–far from it. In its depiction of a community grappling with the pain of what it means to be human, it is a novel which manages to be both poignant and uplifting….You don’t have to be religious to be moved by Kay’s elegantly calibrated writing.” –The Telegraph
“An Equal Stillness won Kay the 2009 Orange Award for New Writers. The faith-and-family subject matter of her second book could make The Translation of the Bones feel rather old-fashioned. Yet, though Kay’s novel is emotional, it’s not sentimental and it never lingers on the spot. This combination of feeling and structural restraint seems rather new, or just unfamiliar.” --The Financial Times (U.K.)
‘The Translation of the Bones is a well-tempered exploration of the haphazard, the religious and the mad…in beautifully musical sentences.” --The Daily Telegraph
--This text refers to the
Paperback
edition.
Book Description
From the winner of the 2009 Orange New Writers Award comes a riveting story of religious passion gone tragically wrong and a profound meditation on the nature of faith, love, and motherhood.
Marking her publishing debut in the U.S., following her critically acclaimed first novel An Equal Stillness which “ignited the imagination” ( The Economist ), Francesca Kay has crafted in crystalline prose a story that unlocks secrets about our capacity to believe and to love in The Translation of the Bones .
When word gets out that Mary-Margaret O’Reilly, a somewhat slow-witted but harmless young woman, may have been witness to a miracle, religious mania descends on the Church of the Sacred Heart in Battersea, London. The consequences are devastating, not only for Mary-Margaret but for others, including Father Diamond, the parish priest, who is in the midst of his own lonely crisis of faith, and Stella Morrison, adrift in a loveless marriage and aching for her ten-year-old son, away at boarding school. Meanwhile another mother, Alice Armitage, counts the days until her soldier son comes home from Afghanistan, while Mary-Margaret’s mother, Fidelma, imprisoned in her tower block, stares out over the city through her window for hour after hour with nothing but her thoughts for company. It is Mary-Margaret’s desperate attempt to prove that Jesus loves her that will change all of these lives in a shocking way.
An exquisite novel about how people connect (or fail to) and what they believe in, The Translation of the Bones is slyly funny and utterly haunting—and nothing short of unforgettable.
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Most helpful customer reviews
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Wonderfu Meditation on Faith and Humanity,
By
This review is from: The Translation of the Bones: A Novel (Hardcover)
I ran across The Translation of Bones . I knew that it was a 2012 long - listed Orange Prize contender, but it takes more than that to get me to read a book. Flipping through the pages of the book, I quickly realized that one of the character's, Mary -Margaret O'Reilly , a slow -witted but devoted parishioner of a Catholic Church in South London, believes that while dusting a plaster depiction of Christ, she has seen blood flow from from his crown of thorns.Like most of us, and as author Francesca Kay acknowledges in her novel, I felt both great curiosity and skepticism about this event and wondered where the author would go with this. As it turns out, the bleeding of the plaster Christ remains a shadowy happening. Parish Priest Father Diamond discourages discussion about the event, and blocks off that area of the church . As the Diocese office replies to Father Diamond " The Face of Our Lady on a pizza, Our Lord on a Slice of Toast! Outbreaks of hysteria are to be discouraged." p. 62. Whether one is a believer or a vigorous atheist, this is the most interesting and thought - provoking look at faith, why we believe what we do, and the ambiguity of it all. Stella Morrison is the married mother of ten year old Felix, who she misses dearly because her husband has insisted that Felix attend a Catholic Boarding school . Alice Armitage is in a relatively happy marriage , but is counting the days until her soldier son returns from Afghanistan. Fidelma is the obese, agoraphobic , single mother of Mary- Margaret, still suffering anxiety from her days as a Catholic boarding school student. Mary -Margaret, and fellow parishioners Stella Morrison , Alice Armitage and non - believers alike serve as an intriguing vehicle for author Francesca Kay to explore the ambiguity of faith. Stella Morrison ponders on Mary - Margaret's happening, telling herself that" we accept all sorts of things on other people's say so . The way the Internet works, or that there was once water on Mars." Weeks after Mary - Margaret is convinced that she has seen the blood of Christ, she discovers that she is a " child of sin" (quotations mine), and sets off to prove herself worthy of the Jesus' love. Inadvertently she sets off a tragic chain of events. Later, as psychiatrist Dr. Azin Qureshi examines Mary- Margaret , even he is left with questions. He spends time reflecting on the secular and sacred in his life. He concludes that " people like him had no use for supernatural solace" p 211, but goes on to remember the Muslim faith of his grandparents, and reflects to himself " who are the arbiters of what is true and what is not?" p.212 . The only fault I could find with the book was the slow moving nature of the first 2/3 of the book. After that, I could barely stop turning the pages.The novel is beautifully and profoundly written and I was left with much to reflect on. Francesca Kay writes beautifully, and the novel is full of humanity , as well as questions of faith.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Dark & Sad But Not Without Hope & Redemption,
By
This review is from: The Translation of the Bones: A Novel (Hardcover)
Reason for Reading: The Catholic plot intrigued me as well as the author being an Orange Prize winner.This is a story of faith; of faith tested, lost, denied, renewed and tragically misplaced. The story is dark and it is sad but it is not without hope and redemption. A short book, it makes for a quick read and the book is more about characters than it is about action. A couple of events take place and the majority of the book then ruminates on how the characters react to and deal with those events. The characters are all wonderful. An assortment of Catholics, lapsed Catholics and non-religious. Each is an entirely real person with faults and each one the reader can find sympathy with. The story revolves around a young-ish priest who is undergoing a small crisis of faith at the time of the first event and he feels as if this state of his mind has made him unable to respond in the way in which he should have done thus making his personal crisis of faith feel even more burdensome to him. The characters all find themselves asking questions about their faith, or lack of it, without being able to come to an answer that is not found in the faith itself. I enjoyed the portrayal of a parish community and found some of the thoughts and ideas to be true, while others I quite disagreed with. But on the main, I wholeheartedly found the story to be thought-provoking and stimulating, sad and dark, yes, but redemptive and full of the mystery of the faith. One does not need to share the faith of these characters to enjoy the book, but only wish to journey with them as they travel the paths that all people traverse when they put their lives in the hands of a power greater than them.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
4.8 out of 5 stars (4 customer reviews) 8 of 8 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Profound Tale of Faith, Loneliness and Family,
By Jody Harrington "Quotidian Grace" - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
The second week of January is probably too early to pick the best literary novel of the year, but The Translation of the Bones by Francesca Kay will certainly find a spot high on my personal list by the end of 2012.This superbly crafted tale of how the child-like faith of the mentally disturbed church volunteer Mary Margaret O'Reilly leads to unspeakable tragedy is compelling and profound. Without spoiling the story, I can only reveal that the when the devout Mary Margaret has an accident while cleaning the crucifix in the chapel of the Sacred Heart church in South London, she believes that she has re-opened the wounds of Christ and that belief drives her to seek redemption which ends in the tragedy. Since the accident and her response to it happened with visitors in the chapel, a sensation ensues which drags the priest struggling with his own faith into the situation. Although the length of a novel, The Translation of the Bones is so expertly and sparely written that it reads more like a short story. The plot has no loose ends and all of the characters--Mary Margaret, Father Diamond, Mary Margaret's morbidly obese mother Fidelma, and fellow parishioners Stella Morrison and Alice Armitage--are complex and believable. Francesca Kay is a British author who was won the 2009 Orange Prize for New Writers for her first novel, An Equal Stillness (not yet published in the US). This second work is an inspiring story of faith, loneliness and family relationships which prompts the reader to reflect on these themes after finishing the book. 5 of 5 people found the following review helpful
5.0 out of 5 stars
"Nothing human was foreign to God..",
By K. Corn "reviewer" - Published on Amazon.com
Amazon Verified Purchase(What's this?)
This review is from: The Translation of the Bones: A Novel (Hardcover)
In only a little over 200 pages, author Francesca Kay manages to create what is easily one of the best books of the year...although it may pass under the radar. It shouldn't. The woman at the center of the book, Mary-Margaret O'Reilly, is seen as a simpleton by many who think they know her. But she is far from simple and those who seem to understand her are about to be shocked.Mary-Margaret is a woman who is difficult to sum up. Her actions are fueled by one hope, that her world will be changed forever and she will find love. But first she has to succeed at an elaborate plan. Will her actions bring her the love she so desperately wants? And how were her own views on love affected by her mother's search for love, a woman who seems to feel lovemaking only in dreams? And Father Diamond, a man who worries that he has been too busy "gazing at his own soul to see into the souls of others"? Mary-Margaret's yearning for love and the fulfillment of her faith is nearly palpable. She is not alone in her yearning. Love and grief are at the heart of this book, along with a wealth of surprises (even without the climactic event that shakes everyone to the core). There is also loneliness, the ultimate pain of "being human and alone" and yet for all the sadness it encompasses the book is not bleak. It is poignant and touching. The search for love balances out the pain - or it did for me. Early on, Mary-Margaret is cleaning a statue of Christ in a Roman Catholic church when she witnesses a red color coming from "His wounds." At this point, I believed the book would focus on that event and everyone would exclaim over the possible miracle witnessed by Mary-Margaret. It seemed inevitable. Surprisingly, it was not, which says something about the originality of this book. Instead, the action shifts to the lives of those living near the London church. These people make up their own small world (but not a shallow one). Each person, from the priest to church members to Mary-Margaret's mother are shown to share their own unique burdens, all different, but all focused on variations of love and loss..and of course, faith. Each is affected by Mary-Margaret's actions but also by their own backgrounds. Father Diamond, for instance, strives to maintain his faith, even as Mary-Margaret's beliefs are unwavering. As noted before, the author doesn't waste a word and I've read books which were 400 pages or longer which didn't have the emotional impact of The Translation of Bones:A Novel. It reveals its depths slowly, with secrets revealed, lost loves mourned, and faith wavering or embraced or shaken to the core. As the paths of the men and women in this book overlapped and rippled together, I was drawn into their varied longings and pains as well as their perseverance and resilience. It left me mulling over my own beliefs about what makes life meaningful...as it may many readers who are lucky enough to come across The Translation of Bones: A Novel. 4 of 4 people found the following review helpful
4.0 out of 5 stars
Dark & Sad But Not Without Hope & Redemption,
By Nicola Manning - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: The Translation of the Bones: A Novel (Hardcover)
Reason for Reading: The Catholic plot intrigued me as well as the author being an Orange Prize winner.This is a story of faith; of faith tested, lost, denied, renewed and tragically misplaced. The story is dark and it is sad but it is not without hope and redemption. A short book, it makes for a quick read and the book is more about characters than it is about action. A couple of events take place and the majority of the book then ruminates on how the characters react to and deal with those events. The characters are all wonderful. An assortment of Catholics, lapsed Catholics and non-religious. Each is an entirely real person with faults and each one the reader can find sympathy with. The story revolves around a young-ish priest who is undergoing a small crisis of faith at the time of the first event and he feels as if this state of his mind has made him unable to respond in the way in which he should have done thus making his personal crisis of faith feel even more burdensome to him. The characters all find themselves asking questions about their faith, or lack of it, without being able to come to an answer that is not found in the faith itself. I enjoyed the portrayal of a parish community and found some of the thoughts and ideas to be true, while others I quite disagreed with. But on the main, I wholeheartedly found the story to be thought-provoking and stimulating, sad and dark, yes, but redemptive and full of the mystery of the faith. One does not need to share the faith of these characters to enjoy the book, but only wish to journey with them as they travel the paths that all people traverse when they put their lives in the hands of a power greater than them. |
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