Booklog: Conclave by Robert Harris

[dornishviperx]

I read this book with a friend after we'd both watched the movie! I actually finished it a few weeks ago and just forgot to post, haha. In general I thought the book was a very fun and quick read, very tense and excitign exactly where it needed to be but never very complicated. One thing to know about me is that I hate the Catholic Church, and this book is very much about one of their funniest rituals, which is the election of a pope. I didn't really expect it to reckon with the church's horrible history or anything, but it is interesting that it touched on those things, usually briefly and superficially. Now, the POV character is himself a cardinal, so it makes sense that he would barely skim the surface of these "scandals" (you know, rape and pedophilia and general corruption), but it still felt strange. The book itself seems much more fascinated by the strangeness and mystery of a conclave than anything else, though, so I wasn't exactly expecting a critical read.

The other thing is that the POV character is very fun to read. He's extremely repressed as one might expect, so learning to read him and read between what he actually writes is a very fun and engaging experience. Honestly, this is a book that's a lot more fun to read if you're predisposed to be wearing fujoshi goggles while doing so, because Lomeli's narration really is fertile ground for it. He's a ball of stress and anxiety who spends his entire time running away from making any decisions at all and hoping nobody even looks at him, except until everything comes to a head and he has to act.

Tension's great, pretty funpace and prose. Solid thing to be reading while at the beach, in my opinion.