Thomas Keneally is regarded as the greatest Australian novelist and has a fair claim to being one of the great novelists of the English language. He has won the Booker prize for "Schindler's Ark" (which was made into the movie "Schindler's List") and been short-listed several more times. Several of his novels are set in Australia, but he has set novels in many parts of the world, over several centuries.
"The Office of Innocence" is a story about a young Australian priest, Father Frank Darragh, and his education in life in a parish in Sydney in 1942. The times are apocalyptic, with the Japanese relentlessly conquering the South Pacific and starting to bomb Australian cities before their progress was stopped at the Coral Sea. Father Frank learns the limitations of his office as a priest. He tries to minister to a tubercular woman, who is causing a scandal by living with her lover - a Communist labour organizer - and her doting husband. He meets the wife of a soldier who was captured in North Africa. She wants to discuss a man who is being kind to her, helping her out with food and goods during wartime rationing, to defend her decision to risk of being seduced into adultery to avoid poverty and support her child with dignity. He is drawn to her, but in a very understated way. He is troubled by the confession of a teaching brother who has sexually abused a student. He becomes involved with an American MP who seeks advice, and draws Father Darragh in to help counsel a black American soldier who has deserted and is living with a white Australian woman. His involvement and engagement in messy situations draws the ire of his pastor. The Monsignor is a practical and efficient administrator who prefers a disengaged priesthood of administration and ritual within the certainties of the Catholicism of the Latin Mass and the old Catechism with its rules for life, from cradle to grave. The story becomes tragic when the soldier's wife is murdered, and Father Frank's role is mentioned in the newspaper. Father Frank is sent on retreat and marginalized by the diocese because he seems to have a poor sense of public relations and to lack the common sense to avoid engaging with troublesome people.
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