A Whispered Name, by William Brodrick
This is the third of William Brodrick’s sensitively wrought novels featuring his contemplative monk, Anselm, an attractive and credible Every- man who has occasionally to leave his monastery to investigate ambiguous problems of evil, forgiveness and, in this case, sacrifice.
Brodrick’s hero is aptly named since Saint Anselm, an 11th-12th century Archbishop of Canterbury, was a renowned scholastic who defended the faith by intellectual argument rather than by reference to scripture and other authorities. Broderick’s Anselm does much the same in his contemporary investigations, guided by moral reasoning and intuition rather than dogma. He is helped by the fact that, before becoming a monk, he was a barrister (his creator did it the other way round).
In this novel the death of Herbert Moore, an ancient revered monk, provokes his fellows to seek to reconcile half-known elements of his past.
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