"Love follows knowledge."
"Beauty above all beauty!"
– St. Catherine of Siena

Wednesday, October 22, 2014

The Priest and the Prostitute by Victor S E Moubarak

This is neither a book review nor an analysis.  This is a strictly a plug for a fun book written by a frequent visitor to this blog.

While I was traveling last week and in my personal time while not working, I grew a little tired from Dante’s Paradisio and flipped through my Kindle and came to a recent purchase of a lighter read.  One gets mentally exhausted traveling, going through tedious engineering meetings, and reading complicated literature.  A mental break was in order for something less stressing and recreative.   

There on my Kindle was Victor Moubarak’s book.  You may know Victor (the Victor I call Victor M. since there is another frequent visitor also named Victor) from his comments here or from his own blog, Time For Reflections.  It’s a fun blog and I stop there frequently myself.  On Victor’s blog he occasionally tells tales of a certain Father Ignatius.  He also has a short story collection pertaining to Fr. Ignatius’s activities and adventures, The Adventures of Father Ignatius, which I also own.   Between the short stories and the blog posts, I had come to the conclusion early on that Victor was an actual priest and that he was writing from experience because he writes so convincingly.  Well, I found out he isn’t; he’s married with children.  But he has an incredible insight into priestly life and experience (I don’t know how). 

He recently wrote a full novel, The Priest and the Prostitute, with the Fr. Ignatius character, and when it came to my attention I quickly bought it off Amazon as a Kindle ebook.  So I read it this past week to get a mental break and I couldn’t put it down.  What a fun book, though the situation for Fr. Ignatius isn’t so fun since he’s accused of murdering a prostitute.  Here’s a short section, from the beginning of Chapter 4.

Three months on and Father Igantius had truly settled at St. Vincent.  His original apprehension that returning was perhaps an unwise move had all but faded away.  It’s surprising how quickly one settles back to an old routine when feeling comfortable and at peace with oneself.

He celebrated Mass each morning at eight, visited the homeless shelter twice a week, spent most afternoons dealing with paperwork or visiting the sick at the hospital or at home, or going one or two parishioners temporarily in jail.  And every Friday evening he sat by the log fire in the large room listening to Verdi in company with Sister Martha who too had fallen back into the old routine of calling on him on her way to the convent. 

One fresh late-August evening Father Ignatius arrived at St. Vincent at about nine o’clock just as it was getting a little darker.  He got out of the car and was on his way towards Parish House when he was approached by a blonde woman in her late thirties who’d just walked out of the church and made her towards him.  He was surprised that the church was still open at this hour and he made a mental note to lock up before he got into the house.

“Hello Father Ignatius,” said the woman as she stopped some four feet away.

It was a moment when one’s brain works at a million miles an hour trying to work out a situation and getting nowhere.  Her voice sounded so familiar.  So did her face.  Father Ignatius tried hard to remember who she was and where he had met her before but it seemed his “little grey cells” had let him down.

“Don’t you remember me Father?” she said eventually, “I’m Joanna!”

“Oh yes, hello!” he heard himself mutter.

Joanna was an occasional visitor to the church on Sundays many years ago.  She was politely known as a lady of the night, and made no secret of the fact.  Many surmised that most gentlemen of the parish had at one time or another been entertained by Joanna.  Indeed she had confessed her sin many a time to Father Ignatius although she never named names.

“Just hello,” she said, “No hug?”

“I remember what happened the last time Judas hugges someone,” said Father Igantius and regretted saying it almost immediately.

I’m going to stop there, because that’s a really good hook.  Isn’t that enticing?  The characters are idiosyncratically charming, and you really feel for Fr. Ignatius’ predicament.  Set in a North England town, presumably one where Victor lives, and though I’ve never traveled there it felt very immediate.  He captures it well I think.


Victor who apparently has skills in various media has put together a little video to advertise  the book.





You can get it at Amazon, and the Kindle version is only $4 at the American site.  It’s worth it.  It’s not high literature like I normally read, but I really enjoyed it.

9 comments:

  1. Thank you so much Manny for this lovely and generous representation of my book. You are so kind and I appreciate your encouragement and support.

    The only reason it is not high literature is because I sit on a low chair whilst typing at the keyboard. I tried a bar stool once and fell off many times.

    God bless you and your family my friend.

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    1. Oh I just told the truth. It's a good book. You should be proud of your work.

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  2. Jan, the "fun" bloggerOctober 23, 2014 at 10:37 AM

    Manny, Manny, Manny....although you are a frequent visitor, and say nice things once-in-awhile, you've never said my blog was fun. My blog is fun.

    Looks like a good read, Victor SE!

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    1. Your blog is fun. I've just never had the occasion. I think I've said you're a funny lady, at least at your blog.

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  3. Whow Manny! I don't believe "IT" I'm your friend and Victor M. is just a frequent visitor to this blog?... Manny! Manny! Manny! you've got to stop all this honest flattery before sinner vic starts to believe that maybe you're also one of their brotherly gods...lol

    All kidding aside Manny! About an hour ago, "I", "I" mean sinner vic had written an honest comments about this post and long story short, i was kind of pleased with what was written but when i tried to send it in, i was well over your allowed four thousand sum word characters... as a matter of fact, i felt that it was so good that there's no way that i was going to shorten it so i added probably twice as much more to it... i talked about some of the problems here in Canada with not having an official law yet for our ladies of the night and of course sinner vic defended them...

    Tell me how i could stop sinner vic from taking a tantrum just because he believes that "Jesus" doesn't really exist and he even bossed having saved some of your gene cells when they got sick on a plane and to top it off he thinks that he's a vic car, i mean believes that he's a vicar of... "NEVER MINE"...

    http://www.patheos.com/blogs/theanchoress/2014/10/22/good-for-voris-now-about-our-tendencies-toward-idols/

    he also spoke about:

    http://taylormarshall.com/2014/10/055-baptized-babies.html

    he closed or should i say that i Victor told him to BE NICE when he started to talk about how as god, he got our now Prime Minister elected and he even rubbed it in that he was very friendly with your let us say, your United States of America President...lol

    The last straw came when sinner vic started to say that four out of six of our grand children who live in OTTAWA were truly involved in various school closing because of a tragic shooting which probably affected my writing...

    https://ca.news.yahoo.com/politicians-police-start-reflection-canada-safe-enough-080015284.html

    I finally closed sinner vic's very long comment with this song below:

    https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3GKhDCsLrUg

    I then quietly said "Thank YOU GOD" but never got any further cause my computer screen completely turned green and longer story shorter, "IT" was all lost...

    I told my wife, prayed The Rosary and then started all over again with this little piece... so here goes...

    God Bless you, yours and all your readers

    OK! Try again! :)

    P.S. Tell Victor M. that I've received this book a couple of days ago and I'm not sure that I'll read it because who knows... if "I" do sinner vic might start flying off somewhere. :)

    Yours Sincerely

    Mr. Victor Savard

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    1. What a great version of How Great Thou Art. Why did you sign in as anonymous and not use your name? Forget to log in? My prayers for Canada and that soldier and his family.

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  4. Thank you Manny for the warm comment about the song but especially for the kindness toward Canada soldier and his family... as for why I did not sign in the way I usually do... long story short... let's just say that I'm still not able to sign into your google account since my new computer crashed... Google says that I'm having cookies problems and told me how to fix it... longer story shorter... I'm wondering if it is not Google, Firefox and Explorer who are really fighting over my cookies? ;)

    I hear YA! Are you sure that it is not really just sinner vic who is being stubborn and simply won't co-operate?

    Go Figure Man LOL ;)

    God Bless you Manny

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    1. Oh try Chrome. Everything seems to work better in Chrome. Now that I think of it, my friend Sue also says she can't log in and has to use Anonymous for the same reason.

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  5. I do have Chrome also... long story short, one of our grandchildren who goes to college says that I'm creating my own problems and longer story shorter, I should only be using Firefox cause their cookies taste better... Go figure! lol

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