The Celibate

Résumé du livre

This is the story of a young man with his mind full of God and his heart closed to love. An ordinand, he has had a traumatic breakdown while serving at the altar. The Church has sent him to London, to confess to a therapist rather than a priest. In the course of his confession, he confronts the mysteries of his past: his Jewish heritage, his mother's death, his father's rejection, his wealth, his loneliness. His cure begins as he comes to terms with his own history and he can consider those more troubled than he. He finds work in the slums of the East End guiding tours of Jack the Ripper's crime scenes. Living in an unfamiliar world of outcasts, rent-boys, fundamentalists, sadomasochists and AIDS sufferers, he is forced to face reality. He finally acknowledges physical passion, first for a humble rent boy and then for a sadistic pimp.