Father Malachy’s Miracle by Bruce Marshall – #NovNov Day 19

What a delightful novel. I bought Father Malachy’s Miracle (1931) early last year because the premise sounded so interesting, and because I had previously read Marshall’s novel High Brows as part of my DPhil research. And the book was really fun, as well as funny, and has made me keen to seek out more of Marshall’s work.

Father Malachy is a monk who is visiting a Catholic church in Glasgow, there to instruct the priests on chanting liturgy. Father Malachy reminded me of Trollope’s Septimus Harding – in that he is simple, kind, faith-filled, and a little shocked and saddened by the wantonness of the world.

In conversation with a local priest of a different denomination, the topic of miracles comes up. Father Malachy believes that God is still capable of doing miracles, and will still perform them if there is good reason. The Protestant minister doesn’t believe this (incidentally, this is not a universally held Protestant viewpoint, by any means. I suppose I am Protestant, inasmuch as I am not Catholic, and I certainly believe God still performs miracles). And so Father Malachy asks God to work a miracle, to bring faith back to an increasingly faithless Scotland.

And which miracle? Well, in the spirit of moving mountains into the sea, Father Malachy asks for the Garden of Eden to be moved to a Scottish island. What is the Garden of Eden? In this instance, it is a dance hall that is near the Catholic church, and believed by some of the priests there to be a hotbed of sin – though Father Malachy himself is rather more charitable towards them. Anyway, the Protestant minister is incredulous:

”Do you honestly mean to stand there and tell me that, in this twentieth century and in this metropolis of learning, God could perform the miracle of transporting this home of light and healthy amusement through the ether? Mr dear Father, please reflect upon what you are saying.”

This is exactly what he means. The day and time is set. And… the dance hall lifts up into the air, and lands on the distant island.

One of the things I loved about Father Malachy’s Miracle is that Marshall restrains himself from putting all the drama into this miraculous event. We don’t see anything from the perspective of the people being supernaturally transitioned. We don’t even visit the Garden of Eden after it has landed. Rather, the novel is about Father Malachy – about the drama he has unleashed and its consequences; about his reflections on the wisdom of the act, and reactions from other priests, journalists, laymen, and a canny film producer. Throughout, Marshall never sneers at faith. I only found out afterwards that he was Catholic himself, but it makes sense. So few novelists write well about faith, and Marshall is among them.

Which is not to say the novel is po-faced. Oh gosh, far from it. His tone reminded me of Compton Mackenzie when he’s being witty, or even E.F. Benson. I enjoy that he can take religious faith seriously while still indulging in a slightly bitchy tone. On the second page, he describes a woman ‘whose hat was one of those amorphous black affairs which would have been, at any moment, out of fashion in any country’ – and I knew I was sold. Actually, the page before that I had already noted how much I enjoyed this eyebrow-raised scene setting:

Outside, on the grey ribbon of platform which ran dismally along the side of the train, newsboys were pushing on wheels pyramids of the contemporary literature, gay magazines within whose covers female novelists split their infinitives and modern deans argued as to whether twin beds in matrimony were of the esse or merely of the bene esse of the sacrament. Outside, boys were selling sticky sweets and cigarettes, and porters were pushing luggage, and flabby, colourless people were jostling one another with impatience as though their departure for Falkirk or Edinburgh were important and as though the dreadful immorality of their souls shone out, for all to see, through the pigginess of their earthly faces. Outside, Queen Street Station, Glasgow, looked just as depressing as the Gare du Nord, Paris, and suggested, just as adequately, milk-cans, lavatories and eternal damnation.

It’s such a ’30s novel, which is certainly a good thing in my book. I loved the characters, the story, and the way that Marshall handled everything. The only thing I didn’t like was the blurb on the edition I read – which gives away so much plot that it includes something that happens on p189 of 191 pages. Tut tut!

Father Malachy’s Miracle is so up my street that I wonder if anybody else would enjoy it as much as I did. It might be hard to find out, as copies online do look a bit scarce and expensive. But if you speak German then you might have better luck tracking down Das Wunder des Malachias – or even watching the award-winning film from the 50s. If this review has sparked your interest, I’d recommend tracking the novel down one way or another.