Motherless
Review by Emily Rice For The BulletinReaders who have been awaiting the return of Father John Sweeney and his parishioners from St. Martha's will not be disappointed by this latest installment in their story, local author Brian J. Gail's much anticipated second novel,Motherless, expected to hit shelves this October. Firmly set in the present moment,Motherlessreintroduces us to old friends tempered by the intervening twenty years of experience since the setting of Mr. Gail's best selling first novel,Fatherless. These characters still sing, evidently drawn by a writer remarkable not only for his keen observation of the human condition, but also for his fierce love for humanity. Uniting the disparate worlds these people inhabit: health care, Madison Avenue advertising and bio medical research,Motherlesscaptures a comprehensive snap shot of the most critical issues of our time. WhereFatherlessfocused on the personal and social effects of the Sexual Revolution and the contraceptive Pill,Motherlesspicks up these threads and exposes the magnitude of the perversion to which those personal decisions have accommodated us. The contemporary reality of international black markets for human eggs and sperm and the farming of embryonic human children for laboratory research is rendered simultaneously more horrifying and more personal through Mr. Gail's careful narration of the interplay between human frailty and the diabolical design which enables it. For anyone who has struggled to reconcile our culture s embrace of the promised benefits of the Life Sciences revolution with a natural revulsion at their advertised price, the literal consumption of our own young,Motherlesslifts a veil. The plot illustrates connections between our most intimate decisions and the national and international policies that seek not merely to change the world, but to fundamentally alter the very nature of Man. This ongoing story exposes the systemic sin that permeates modern life so as to enmesh us ever deeper in the culture of death even as it erodes our ability to make conscious decisions to avoid evil, or even our awareness that there are any such decisions to be made. The narcissism which characterizes contemporary man necessarily impacts every aspect of his existence, but the interrelation of these superficially distinct pathologies can be difficult to discern amid the complexity that is modern life. The unique power of art to clarify our own experience constitutes the greatest gift of this book. As an example, a dinner party conversation set in the aftermath of the stock market crash of October 2008 becomes both a sobering history lesson and a metaphor for the larger human condition. Discussing the origins of the crisis in the shifting importance of America's financial services and manufacturing sectors, the inhabitants of Narbrook are confronted with the unpleasant reality that our situation has been presaged by the experience of the Spanish, Dutch and British Empires. Once an empire stops making and shipping things and focuses mostly on moving money around, for all intents and purposes, it s over. Evidently no realm of human experience is immune from the insatiable demand unleashed when the natural price of any pleasure is removed. Of course, these are universal human concerns, but as a self-consciously Catholic novelMotherlessparticularly explores the unique resources which the Catholic Church brings to this battle. From uncatechized lay people right up to the Church hierarchy we are called to obey the dictates of conscience, informed and strengthened by the word of God, the Magisterium, and our Lord in the Eucharist. --The Bulletin: Philadelphia's Family Newspaper