Reviewed by Jayne White
The press release for this 20th anniversary reprint states ‘The Celibate is the story of a young, unnamed ordinand with his mind full of God and his heart closed to love.’ I’m not sure I agree with this if I’m honest. OK, the ordinand is young. He’s also unnamed - this is always a really helpful authorial device from a reviewer’s point of view. I intend to call him ‘O’, for the sake of readability. Is his mind full of God though? I’m tempted to say not. He’s full of religiosity, but that’s not really the same thing is it?
The greater part of
the narrative is O’s contributions in his sessions with his psychiatrist. We
never hear the psychiatrist speak and have to deduce his contributions from O’s
responses. These one-sided conversations are broken up with segments of two
tour guide commentaries which underline some of the themes arising in O’s
story, of which more later.
O has had an emotional
meltdown during his training for the priesthood and has been sent to London to
live in a religious house and ‘volunteer’ at a church based drop-in centre for
the homeless and vulnerable. He’s in denial; he’s defensive; he’s isolated;
he’s judgmental; he’s clinging to his rigid interpretation of Christianity with
all his might as it’s the only identity that he wants to claim. He gives us the impression of having
no real self, not even a sexuality, just a set of learned behaviours which he
regards as appropriate to his vocation. However, there are glimmers of the sexuality
he denies in his close friendship with a fellow ordinand who he claims betrayed
their friendship by falling in love with him. In reality, it’s not that
religious oppression has thwarted his sexual development; he’s an
Anglo-catholic so celibacy is a free choice rather than an imposed condition. Instead O has partially chosen the church
as a career because he hopes his celibacy will be respected rather than seen as
a deficiency.
We see from very early
on that he’s an unreliable narrator, at first refusing to give credence to his
superiors’ version of the event that led to his need for treatment, then
passing it off as a physical affliction only, before grudgingly accepting the
term ‘breakdown’. From his own account we can see that he’s unable to relate to
his co-workers. He’s also very uncomfortable about his background and
childhood. He comes from a very wealthy family with an ill mother and an absent
father and was largely raised by an aunt who wanted him to be wholly Jewish
despite his Christian mother. The unfolding of what exactly did happen in his
family takes some time to discover as there are some things he wants to conceal
and other things he has blocked out of his memory. He recalls his uncle turning
to vagrancy and one night follows a man he thinks might be him. This leads to
him getting involved with a group of rent boys who repulse and fascinate him in
equal measure.
The author has decided
that before O can bounce back that he has to hit rock bottom. This is achieved
by embarking on a viciously self-destructive relationship with a professional
sadist which makes very disturbing reading and ends with a suicide attempt. After
this he does begin to rebuild his life.
The tour guide
commentary in the first part of the novel is from a Jack the Ripper tour which
talks at length about prostitution, poverty and pornography. As well providing
useful relief from the monologue style narrative of the therapy sessions, these
passages encourage us to reflect on the lives of those people who are beneath
the notice of ‘decent’ people and O’s very negative old-school attitude that
sexuality is a gateway to sin and death.
In the second half of
the novel O becomes politically aware and gains a sense of community from
taking part in Pride marches and campaigning against Section 28. He finds
himself a boyfriend and becomes involved with his circle of friends. When HIV
and AIDS begin to affect the people he knows, he needs to grow still further in
order to cope with the suffering and loss. The commentary in the second half is
from a tour of the village of Eyam in Derbyshire. When the plague came to the
village they elected to isolate themselves so that it didn’t spread around the
district. These sections emphasise how a community can support each other
through suffering and give hope that after some difficulty they can be accepted
back into the world at large.
This is a good novel. It’s
thoughtful and philosophical and the character of O is very well drawn. It’s a
novel which challenges the reader, as it’s not often you find abusive urolagnia
and serious theological reasoning in the same book. It also conveys the late
1980s very well. Does this mean it’s dated now? After all, our society has
moved on a great deal in terms of LGBT rights and recognition. Therapies for
HIV have improved. There are places where the novel is fighting for things that
have now come to pass. However, I think the book is still timely in a way
because it highlights a very current issue with tensions between gay rights
activists and the more traditional Christian churches. According to some
activists, to be a Christian is to be a homophobe and religion justifies acts
of hatred towards LGBT people, and yet many Christians are LGBT, having struck
a balance between the teachings of their church and their sexual identity. This
book demonstrates convincingly how that can be managed by opening up the
discussion of weighing traditional church law against the conscience of the
individual; questioning the degree to which God experienced human love and
affection through the person of Christ; and accepting that the instincts to
cherish and care for those we feel close to are part of how we’re made.
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