Writing Straight with Crooked Lines: A Memoir
JIM FOREST
(ORBIS BOOKS, 336 PP, £25.99)
Tablet bookshop price £23.39 • Tel 020 7799 4064

As I read Jim Forest’s profound memoir, I found myself recalling Pope John XXIII’s Journal of a Soul. Forest’s book is completely different in context and style, but it too reflects the journey of a soul. And at the heart of that soul journey is the primacy of conscience. Too often the Catholic Church has underplayed the importance of conscience, behaving in a “this is what you have to believe” and “this is how you have to act” way. Forest shows how such an approach fails to appreciate the radical heart of the Gospel.

The first influence on Forest was his parents who, with their socialist and communist sympathies, taught him that to respect and value the integrity of others was at the core of being human. This was Cold War America, and as Forest grew up he appreciated what his parents’ beliefs were costing him. He realised they were being monitored by the FBI when, as a teenager, he had the unique experience of going to ring his girlfriend from the local payphone his parents used and, on ringing her, heard a recording of the conversation he had had with her the night before, courtesy of the FBI listening in.