Black Robe

Too bad this one can't be rated higher than 5-stars. I first read this one back in the 80s, then seeing the movie. I have both the hardcover edition and the DVD. That's how good I feel this material to be. This book caused me to track down Francis Parkman's writing on France & England in the new world. Later caused me to purchase a few books on Father DeSmet and his work with the western Indian tribes. Though Fenimore Cooper's writings overstated the case of the last of the Mohicans, this writing on the Huron really does document the end of the Hurons as a people. Don't know if anyone will be interested in this review this late after this book has passed its prime. But reading on the Huron experience and the Black Robes stays with me both as interesting historical experience, and enjoyable reading. If you combine the book with the VHS or DVD, the visual aspects make the material more imprinted on your mind. Though Brian Moore is deceased, his works, especially this one, live on. Hopefully many people will yet be interested in this one. Highly recomended. Semper Fi.

The late lamented Bian Moore often inhabited worlds where graham greene had become master{though Moore was not very far behind.} The world of moral ambiguities,the world that we live in. In Black Robe he takes this to another level, telling the tragic story of the Jesuit missions to Canada and the Huron. It tells the story of a zealous,pious younf Jesuit,his assistant, and the native people who help them. Loosely based on the life of Jean de Brebouf{who pened the famous Chrstmas carol,the huron carol and suffered an unbelievable,torturous death},young Fr.Laforgue,who is woefully prepared for this stumbles into one situation after another.His zeal,though, becomes tempered by compasion,and his character is not one dimensional.Eventuallly, he is abandoned and finds the huron mission he set out for, leaving the then village of quebec all those miles and deaths ago. the viloence is quite graphic[including the death of a child which stayed with me for some time}.the ending,where lafaogue finds the village sick with fever,agreeing to be baptized if the Blackrobes wil cure them.The ending is chilling and superb and all the more so since it actually happened.One of Moore's best,which says a great deal.

When Brian Moore died on January 11th of this year (1999), we lost one of our best serious novelists. Without succumbing to gargantuism (his novels are generally under 300 pages) or obscurantism (the stories are pretty straightforward & the linguistic pyrotechnics are minimal) or fishing for a best seller, he managed to produce novels that are both thrilling and thought provoking.In Black Robe he describes a journey by two Jesuits in 17th century Canada on a mission to relieve a dying priest. With considerable empathy and insight, he portrays Father Paul Laforgue's near-suicidal longing to be a martyr for Christ; the sexual torment of young Daniel Davost, Laforgue's protege who has been seduced by a native girl; and the mixture of superstitious fear and hatred that they provoke in the native tribes. The action that ensues when these two white men come in contact with the natives, will test all of their beliefs. As Moore describes it in his Introduction: the Indian belief in a world of night and in the power of dreams clashed with the Jesuits' preachments of Christianity and a paradise after death. This novel is an attempt to show that each of these beliefs inspired in the other fear, hostility, and despair, which later would result in the destruction and abandonment of the Jesuit missions, and the conquest of the Huron people by the Iroquois, their deadly enemy.Moore states his own case a little too pessimistically, the clash of cultures that he presents is indeed brutal, but it is not futile. In the novel's closing scene, Laforgue who has despaired of his own worthiness to be a martyr, despite withstanding torture, abandonment by Davost and the murder of the priest they came to replace, agrees to baptize native villagers who are being ravaged by the plague; not necessarily because he believes that their conversion is genuine or that it will save them, but simply because he loves them and because, finally, he believes that God loves them all. Despite the brutality and destructiveness of these initial encounters between the Blackrobes and the Indians, it is this ethos of Christian love that eventually won the day and brought civilization to Canada and its native population. I know it's not a popular thing to say, but...that's a good thing.GRADE: B+

If you want to be known for writing a great novel in the historical fiction genre, you must do three things. First you must be able to tell a good story. This one is about a French Jesuit priest in 1643 Quebec, who decides to go on a lengthy and arduous journey--in perhaps the most desolate, dangerous land in the world--to assist in the conversion of the heathen savages. Accompanied by members of the Algonkian tribe, he participates in their strenuous canoe journey down the river, is tormented by illness and by the savages' (the author's word) sorcerer, gets lost, witnesses their hunting and camping rituals, is captured and tortured by another tribe, escapes, and finally gets to his destination. If this kind of thing doesn't boil your blood, well, go ahead and read Proust. Second, you must be historically accurate. Not only do you not wish to have your readers throw your book at the wall with disgust, but more importantly, you want your readers to come away from their experience with an understanding of a time and place which to some degree was previously unknown to them. This book accomplishes this down to the tiniest detail. We see how the savages dress, what they eat, how they eat it, how they camp at night, how they speak with each other, and how women and children are treated in their little society. We learn what motivates them spiritually and realize that the conditions under which they lived had an effect on their beliefs. Beyond this, we get to know them individually, with their all too human quirks and foibles, and we come to feel empathy for them. They are real to us; we respond to them emotionally. The Jesuit priest is no less expertly drawn. He is so devoted to his Catholic religion that he reacts with an almost . . . excitement towards the prospect of dying for it; to him he would become a martyr. But his chosen way of life comes with its own problems: he is not capable of handling his own sexuality or the sexuality of others, and reacts to these events in a guilty, fearful, and indecisive manner. The savages consider him weak and foolish, and in many ways he is. But we also are shown his strength, and unwavering sense of purpose. If, as a novelist, you are able to accomplish the above, you will have authored an excellent piece of fiction. But in order to write a truly outstanding novel, you must accomplish one more thing: the transcendence of the subject matter into universal human themes. In this case, the clash of two complex and utterly divergent cultures and their juxtaposition with each other gives us a new understandings of both. To the savages, baptism is "water sorcery;" to the savages, praying over beads is putting a curse on someone; to the savages, eating the flesh of a dead God in a solitary room is simply foolish; and to the savages, the concept of one God is ridiculous. Of course to the Jesuits the savages appear barbaric, with their sorcerers, su