Violeta
ISABEL ALLENDE
BLOOMSBURY, 336 PP, £16.99)
Tablet bookshop price £15.29 • tel 020 7799 4064

These days we have become accustomed to fictional portrayals of nefarious members of the Catholic clergy. They provide the villainous template for, say, the novels of Philip Pullman or the recent film Procession. It is less common to find Catholic priests lionised, yet in Isabel Allende’s Violeta we meet Camilo, a priest brave enough to swim with sharks, who lives with the poor because he wants to “suffer alongside the most vulnerable”, and is happy to follow his conscience in conducting a same-sex wedding despite opposition from his bishop.

Camilo is the grandson of the book’s title character, and the entire book consists of Violeta telling the story of her 100-year-long life to this priest, a most beloved and admired member of her family. We never hear his own voice, and so the story feels rather like an extended spell in the confessional.