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Aelred's Sin
Robert de la Borde comes from the Caribbean to England in the 1980's after hearing that his brother, Jean Marc, has died. In Bristol, his brother's journals prompt Robert to visit the Ashton Park Monastery, which Jean Marc entered in the 1960's as Brother Aelred. There Robert pieces together Jean Marc's life; his exuberance, his mental suffering, and his struggle to balance his sexual impulses with his love of God. As Robert is forced to question his inherited prejudices, what unfolds is a story about the triumph of compassion over brutality. Moving from present to past, from cruelty to sympathy, Aelred's Sin is a powerful new novel of erotic love, spiritual awakening and above all, reconciliation.
- GenresLGBT
304 pages, Paperback
First published March 1, 2000
About the author
Lawrence Scott
34 books9 followersLawrence Scott is a prize-winning Caribbean novelist and short-story writer from Trinidad & Tobago.
He has been awarded and short-listed for a Commonwealth Writers’ Prize Best Book and Best First Book in Canada & the Caribbean, twice Long-Listed for The International Impac Dublin Literary Award, The Whitbread Prize and The Booker Prize. He was awarded the Tom-Gallon Short-Story Award.
His work has stimulated critical work into the post-colonial novel’s use of magic-realism, carnival, calypso, her/history, storytelling, dialect/standard narratives, identity, landscape, the body, race, religion and homo/sexuality.
His work has been performed on the BBC. His poetry has been anthologised in Europe and the Caribbean. He travels frequently in North and South America and the Caribbean and has read, lectured and talked about his work internationally.
Books
Biography
Critical Essays
Bibliography
TV & Radio
He was Writer-in-Residence at the University of the West Indies and was a judge for the 2006 Commonwealth Short-Story Competition.
He is A Senior Research Fellow of The Academy at Unversity of Trinidad and Tobago (UTT) for Arts, Letters, Culture and Public Affairs 2006-2009.
He lives and works in both Trinidad and England, writing and teaching literature as well as creative writing at The City Literary Institute in London, The Arvon Foundation and City & Islington Sixth Form College where he taught for many years.
He has been awarded and short-listed for a Commonwealth Writers’ Prize Best Book and Best First Book in Canada & the Caribbean, twice Long-Listed for The International Impac Dublin Literary Award, The Whitbread Prize and The Booker Prize. He was awarded the Tom-Gallon Short-Story Award.
His work has stimulated critical work into the post-colonial novel’s use of magic-realism, carnival, calypso, her/history, storytelling, dialect/standard narratives, identity, landscape, the body, race, religion and homo/sexuality.
His work has been performed on the BBC. His poetry has been anthologised in Europe and the Caribbean. He travels frequently in North and South America and the Caribbean and has read, lectured and talked about his work internationally.
Books
Biography
Critical Essays
Bibliography
TV & Radio
He was Writer-in-Residence at the University of the West Indies and was a judge for the 2006 Commonwealth Short-Story Competition.
He is A Senior Research Fellow of The Academy at Unversity of Trinidad and Tobago (UTT) for Arts, Letters, Culture and Public Affairs 2006-2009.
He lives and works in both Trinidad and England, writing and teaching literature as well as creative writing at The City Literary Institute in London, The Arvon Foundation and City & Islington Sixth Form College where he taught for many years.
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Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews
May 16, 2016
An interesting read and compelling in many ways, though always keeping you at a distance as a reader, mostly due to the transcript style of narrative. It was a little difficult to get into at first as the language is rich with imagery, literally more flowery than I usually like, and making sense of the shifting timelines. It is infinitely sad but hopeful at the same time and in places I was grateful for the distance the narrative created. Seeing both sides of the struggle the protagonists experienced, how to reconcile their experiences and world views, creates a bond between them and myself as the reader. It's not a comfortable read. It deals with religion, homosexuality, racism, slavery, and how we reconcile our history, society and ourselves. It's difficult to look honestly at these things and be open about doubt and fear and the choices you make because of them. This book encompasses these things and I think it's only once you close it for the last time, you realise just how much you have absorbed from it.
That said, I think there are too many strands to the narrative and I think some of the ideas are not fully articulated, or maybe I missed them trying to keep everything straight. The lack of speech marks in the Robert sections was distracting and the shifts of story did take me by surprise on occasion. These are mostly niggling things but I found them distracting when trying to immerse myself in the story.
Overall, good but not a re-read for me.
That said, I think there are too many strands to the narrative and I think some of the ideas are not fully articulated, or maybe I missed them trying to keep everything straight. The lack of speech marks in the Robert sections was distracting and the shifts of story did take me by surprise on occasion. These are mostly niggling things but I found them distracting when trying to immerse myself in the story.
Overall, good but not a re-read for me.
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November 4, 2023problematic in ways, though well written - review coming soon
March 6, 2008
excellent book, he was my english teacher at college
July 27, 2021
It took me some time to read Aelred's Sin, and yet when it became time, I reached for it like any faithful companion, found it waiting with chasuble and scapular. I don't think I will read a more sensitive, aching book this year. I don't think it's easy, or neat, to write about spiritual ecstasy, but it is and has long been one of my favourite things to *read* about. Many times during my stay with this book, I thought about perhaps the first definite novel to make me feel this way, La Porte étroite.
Lawrence Scott has written, clear and resonant like the sound a bell makes in the stillness of the night, about men who love each other and who love God, and if this sounds like a simple thing, perhaps it might seem so, because of the care, the meticulous detail of monastic life, and the gothic compulsion to honour a dangerous island home, that Scott breathes into every page. Aelred will never let me go, I believe. I will be back here, to pray and think and pray some more.
Lawrence Scott has written, clear and resonant like the sound a bell makes in the stillness of the night, about men who love each other and who love God, and if this sounds like a simple thing, perhaps it might seem so, because of the care, the meticulous detail of monastic life, and the gothic compulsion to honour a dangerous island home, that Scott breathes into every page. Aelred will never let me go, I believe. I will be back here, to pray and think and pray some more.
August 24, 2018
Have read this 3 times and ready to read it again. A beautiful story
Displaying 1 - 5 of 5 reviews