Conclave has a literal title. It's about the
election of a Pope, behind locked doors. The action takes place in the Vatican,
first in the Pope's private apartments and then alternately in the Vatican's
Casa Santa Marta, where the assembled Cardinals are being put up, and the
Sistine Chapel, where they meet to cast their votes. Michelangelo's frescoes
figure frequently, especially at times of the principal character's moments of
reflection - and they are usually mere shallow moments, liberally strewn with
verbal tools of the trade. But for the most part, these people live entirely in
their here and now and, perhaps uniquely amongst such eminent company, they
hardly ever comment on anything other than the matter in hand.
A Pope has just died. The circumstances are a
little suspicious. There are some interesting aspects to the Pope's final days.
But he has definitely died of heart failure and Cardinals are duly summoned
from across the globe to allow the hand and will of God to identify a
successor. Arrivals include a Nigerian who is aiming to be the first black
Pope, a Canadian who is capable of domination, an Italian who is a champion
of the political Right and another who is not. There is also the diminutive
figure of a Filipino, only recently appointed, who is very much an unknown.
The story unfolds from the point of view of the
Dean, the Cardinal convener of the conclave, another Italian called Lomeli. He
is something of a liberal, and he does not want to be Pope. At least that's
what he says when asked. The action is portrayed from his point of view, but
only ever in the third person. This works for the reader, because when any
factual detail needs to be explained, Lomeli, in the third person, conveniently
thinks about the issue and relates everything needed to make sense of the plot.
Of course at equally convenient moments, he decides to tell the reader nothing,
preferring to wait for the next chapter. This, presumably, is the author
editing the Cardinal's thoughts.
Robert Harris's Conclave is the kind of genre
piece where the plot is everything, so any review must steer well clear of
revealing any of it. On the face of it,
there are numerous potentially interesting conflicts amongst those assembled
for the election. There is First World and Third World, rich and poor, right
and left, traditionalist and liberal, even Latin versus contemporary language.
Scandal, sexuality, celibacy, child abuse, money, ambition, power and a little
history are added to the mix, as are secret hiding places, lost relatives and
terrorist atrocities. And, if there is anything missing, Cardinal Lomeli will
conveniently think about it and let us know all that is deemed relevant.
But the plot is all, and that cannot be
described. Suffice it say that this particular reader had worked out every
detail of the plot inside the first forty pages and simply did not believe that
the obvious route would be followed. It was. Then, throughout, cardboard
cut-out Cardinals crossed the screen to enact said predictable routine.
Conclave thus proved to be a mildly interesting way of filling a couple of
hours but, unlike good fiction, it proved unworthy of a second read. There was
enough complication in these people, however, to make Conclave worth reading
once.
But as ever with genre fiction, it's the shortcomings that are the most memorable. Our ambitious, rather stentorian
Nigerian Cardinal seems not to object when our third person Lomeli narrator
refers to his language, Yoruba, as a dialect. The Italians, of course, speak
Italian, which is a language. Admittedly, it's not only the Church that
patronizes former colonies of the Third World.
But it is in area of realism, that over-worked,
even cliched scenario of almost all genre fiction - even fantasy! - where the
real problem arises. I give nothing away when I state that a terrorist atrocity
figures at one point in the book. There are indeed near-simultaneous attacks
across Europe, for some reason. It's convenient for the plot, it seems. One of
the atrocities is close enough to the action to blow in windows of the Sistine Chapel,
where the conclave continued. Just hours later, despite debris, bomb fragments
and the odd bit of flesh being presumably still strewn around the area, we are
told that a crowd of one hundred thousand has assembled nearby to await the
announcement of the new Pope's identity. It's a good job the conclave did not
take place in Salisbury, Wiltshire, since the onlookers would not have got near
for several months. And without there having been either explosion or
carnage...
Conclave by Robert Harris is a good read. It's
quite well written in an inelegant way. The reader is regularly told convenient
facts whenever they are needed, so there are really no characters, only two-dimensional
costumes that act out a plot. It is generally more credible and perhaps more
interesting than most genre fiction, and will please those who enjoy the form.
Just don't expect anything else.
