Virgin & Child
MAGGIE HAMAND
(BARBICAN PRESS, 280 PP, £16.99)
Tablet bookshop price £15.29 • Tel 020 7799 4064
Maggie Hamand’s new novel opens in modern-day Rome, inside the Vatican City. Newly elected Patrick, the first Irishman to become Pope, a modest and humble man, is passing among the crowds, blessing people, when someone thrusts a baby into his arms, then vanishes. At the same time a furious woman lunges across the security rope and attacks him. Taken off guard, Patrick slaps her back. She is hustled away by the guards and a shaken, penitent Patrick returns to his apartments.
This initial drama soon escalates, as Patrick begins to feel weak and ill, to suspect key political Vatican players of conspiring against him, to worry that his private diary is being read and, increasingly, to fear that he is being spied upon.