Conclave: Now an Oscar and BAFTA winning movie Paperback – 7 Nov. 2024

These days, I write reviews for every book that I read. Usually I have no problem finding the words. Not so with this.As I finished reading the final sentence, just one word entered my head, "Wow!" Actually, I said it out loud. That sums up my thoughts about the book, but is hardly a review.I am a fan of books about the Papacy, whether history or fiction, so I looked forward to reading this. It did not disappoint.The level of research is excellent. The quality of the writing, superb. I was hooked by the end of the first sentence. At no point did this waiver. I devoured every word, wanting to get to the end of the book, but dreading doing so.The characters, even minor ones, are well rounded and very believable. The storyline is strong, and at no point did an element of the fantastical enter to break the flow of the narrative.The highs and lows of the main character resonated with me. I found myself willing the Cardinal to make the right decisions. I felt the pain of his lows and the elation of his highs.I thoroughly recommend this book. I hope that the film does it justice.

I love a political thriller, especially based around elections, and I found this novel about the election of a fictional successor to a recently deceased Pope very gripping, the different personalities and factions providing plenty of food for speculation. Harris appears to have researched the arcane procedures thoroughly and says in his acknowledgement he interviewed off the record a Cardinal who had taken part in at least one conclave. Harris can indeed make almost any background into an effective thriller, as the breadth of his work shows. I partly guessed the final twist part way through, though was a little disappointed as this seemed a little farfetched in practice.

Gripping tale with a great twist at the end. I hadn't seen the film. I believe in this the main character is American. In the book he is Italian. I felt I was having extraordinary insights into this archaic world. Very human with spiritual intrigue.

To be honest, it's a doddle to guess who the next pope is going to be very early on, so no 'wow, who'd have thought it?' at the end. But the strength of the book is the examination of the characters of powerful players on the world stage. It is fine, addictive writing with (to be frank) an uninspiring outcome. For me it was totally absorbing the way the interplay of the brilliantly written characters progressed. So, no surprise but still a great read.

I finished reading this book last week , and today we have sad news from the Vatican . I will now be following developments with great interest as the book allows the reader to visualise the little events that will build up to a huge decision made in a small city state . It will be interesting to see how the turbulent politics of our time could be reflected , or not , in the votes cast by 135 Cardinals from all around the world. Robert Harris has taken us into the room where it happens describing actions taken after the death of the Pope and then the closed security , the domestic arrangements and the support needed when catering for the staggered arrival of religious men with a range of ages, health , language , geographical origin , attitudes. and ambition . The message is clear, they are all men , they are all Catholic., they are each of them unique.As I often do with this author's other work I have reservations about some of the plot, but will not go into details here as I fully recommend this as a work of fiction for this moment. Once the new Pontiff is in place I plan to see the film .

As a long standing fan of Robert Harris’s books it pains me to have to say that I found this one rather disappointing. At the heart of the problem, for me, was a lack of tension. No matter how hard Harris tried, it was difficult for him to inject any real drama into the election of a new Pope that is described in this novel entitled “Conclave”.It didn’t help that by a third of the way through the story it was inevitable who the successful candidate was going to be, and by half way through the book I had spotted the twist in the tail that was to come. The only thing that remained for me to discover, therefore, was how Harris was going to get us from A to B.Rather slowly, was the answer.The story is set slightly in the future, following the sudden death of the Pope. The College of Cardinals then assembles to elect the deceased Pope’s successor. The story is told through the eyes of Cardinal Lomeli who, as Dean of the College, is charged with overseeing the election process.At its roots this is as political a process as the election of a new leader of a political party would be, with the various candidates jockeying for position, some more ruthlessly than others. Skeletons fall out of closets and prejudices are revealed, though it is all done in a very dignified manner. Will a traditionalist be elected, someone who will sweep away the reforms to the Roman Catholic Church that have been made over the previous 50 years? Or will it be a liberal, who will continue to try to reform this Byzantine institution? One by one the candidates are eliminated until the final vote is held.The problem, for me, is that there is no peril attached to the process. No one is going to die because the wrong Pope is elected. No one even dies because they present an obstruction to a candidate being elected. The worst that can happen is that the reputation of one or other of the Cardinals might be damaged and they might have to retire from public life. That lack of drama is telling and turns what might be a good story into a rather pedestrian ramble through the arcane bureaucracy of the Vatican..The story unfolds so slowly that at times I thought I was reading about the events in real time. Given that the story runs over a period of several days you can understand how tedious that is.Harris is a good writer and a reliable researcher. I’m sure that the procedures Harris describes are accurate. But the detail is sometimes exhausting to read. Nothing is considered too insignificant for it to be excluded, including the poor quality of the catering that visitors to the Vatican must suffer.For those readers who are Christian and might be concerned about a challenge to their faith, you need have no fears. This book is about politics, not theology. All the characters we meet are clearly believers. The only differences between them are the nature of their beliefs and the depth of their spirituality. There is no mocking of the Roman Catholic religion, though we are occasionally reminded of some of its institutional failures.While the intricacies of institutional procedures may be fascinating to Robert Harris, they don’t necessarily provide the drama and entertainment demanded by the readers of fiction. I can only hope that this lapse in form is temporary and that Robert Harris will once again write a novel that will thrill us the way he did with Fatherland and Archangel.

Impossible to put down even though I had already seen the film. The detail of procedure and etiquette is fascinating. The real pull though is the anxiety making description of a man’s desire to do the right thing and the swing between his doubts and certainties which despite the excellence of the film are much better expressed in the book.