Faith: A Novel by Jennifer Haigh

Faith is set in a working-class Massachusetts town, so the family is everything you’d expect them to be: Catholic, drinkers, somewhat dysfunctional. One son was a cop; one was a priest. Only daughter Sheila went her own way, moving to another town, not settling down with a husband and children.

This novel is set in the early 21st century, heavily steeped in the Catholic church, so if you can think back to current events of the day, you know what’s coming next. Shelia begins spending much more time with her family after her brother Art is accused of molesting a child. The details aren’t shared with the reader, nor are they made known to Art. The novel seems to be speaking to the way these matters were handled — for so long simply looked over, and then when the truth about past offenses became known, any accusation was taken as gospel immediately.

Sheila is trying to piece together what was going on in her brothers’ lives (both of them, actually, as the scandal caused them to interact more than they had before as well). The way the true story is unfolded, in sort of flashbacks and piecing together, does make it more interesting than if we had just observed it in real-time.

Jennifer Haigh truly reveals some of the characters — Art, the priest; Mike, the self-made man with the seemingly perfect family, though he did marry a Protestant; the matriarch — though others, like Shelia herself, seemed underdeveloped. I especially appreciated how she approached the difficult subject of molestation in a very discreet way.

I’m afraid that this novel is a victim of my high expectations. I did like it, and as always, I appreciated Jennifer Haigh’s quiet style, but I didn’t love it with all of my heart as I wanted to. When I stumbled upon The Condition, it bowled me over. I later picked up one of her backlist titles, Mrs. Kimble, and felt as though she’d done it again for me.

I think that this novel will particularly appeal to working-class New England Catholics, who might feel like they are peering into their own family. Those who didn’t particularly enjoy Jennifer Haigh’s work before, might want to give this one a try, because to me, at least, the telling was very different. Whereas the others were completely character-driven, this novel reads like the unwinding of a life, that of Parish Priest Art Breen, and because his sister Sheila is the one doing the unwinding, throughout the novel the reader is left to ask why and how she’s come to do this, which gives it a type of dramatic suspense.

Also, if you have read some other Jennifer Haigh novels, but didn’t love them, you might like this one more, because it felt very different to me.

Find out more about the novel, and read some other reviews at the Faith Blog Tour page at TLC.

Jennifer Donovan isn’t usually on the fence about anything, but feels quite wishy-washy as far as this review is concerned. She’s usually more straightforward in her thoughts at her blog Snapshot.