meanieheadbookreviews 's review for:

Conclave by Robert Harris

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I don’t normally read books like this (airport novels), but the star-studded movie trailer recently dropped so I had to give it a shot. I was raised Catholic and always think Catholics are just normal Christians… then I’m reminded they’re not. Catholics be crazy. The premise: the pope dies unexpectedly, and a new pope must be elected. But the archaic process uncovers a lot of dark shit, including that the death of the previous pope may not have been from natural causes. The church’s stance on homosexuality is a plot point; the church’s stance on female ordination is an even bigger one. I had a very hard time keeping the characters straight—there are a lot of long, vowel filled names. And they all wear the same outfit. And are all old mostly white men. Very interchangeable. I’m thinking this might be a situation where the movie is better than the book. At least, I hope so with the cast in it. I think it’s gonna be Oscar fodder. The ending took a hard turn that I started to piece together in the last fifth of the book. Didn’t make the reveal less exhilarating. I’m very excited to see how the movie handles it.