He explores the central themes and characters of the novel, and reflects in the second half of the episode on Catholic literature in general, and the role of Catholic novel in the 21st Century.

JUST LIFE - The Beast of Bethulia Park - Simon Caldwell

While vigorous debate is welcome and encouraged, please note that in the interest of maintaining a civilized and helpful level of discussion, comments containing obscene language or personal attacks—or those that are deemed by the editors to be needlessly combative or inflammatory—will not be published.It is surely ironic that TCWfeels unable to print the offensive material which the school considered to be entirely appropriate for children aged 12 upwards. Baines visits the Tyburn Tree at London’s Marble Arch where “more than a hundred Catholic men and women died as martyrs between 1535 and 1681. Her investigation into a series of deaths at the book’s eponymous hospital, which forms the basis of the plot, leads her into many quandaries.

The Beast of Bethulia Park”: A Catholic tale for summer “The Beast of Bethulia Park”: A Catholic tale for summer

It tells the story of a young and idealistic priest who is pitched into a dark world of sexual obsession, danger and death when he becomes embroiled in a campaign to unmask a murderous doctor. It is a humanising portrait of a genuinely devout individual trying, and largely succeeding, in living up to his religious principles surrounding sex and relationships, a tale that few English novels published this side of the sexual revolution have told well. By my lights, any resurgence in marketable Catholic creativity should certainly be permitted to embrace more populist fare, including the sort of summer beach reads meant to be consumed lightly — enjoyably picked up and put down as leisure permits. Pic of Wigan Pier, which features in The Beast of Bethulia Park, along with Trencherfield Mill in the background, the residence of Emerald Essien, the mysterious and beautiful nurse at war with the evil Dr Klein. Her deeply traumatic past and thirst for vigilante justice aside, Emerald is the closest thing the novel has to a stand-in character for a general audience.Death, putting in place the systemic extermination of the weak and the voiceless, the very young and the very old. From fag-ends in flowerbeds to sticky pub floors, every inch of the novel’s landscape feels grittily plausible.