'If God knows our ends, why cannot he prevent them, why is the world so full of malice and cruelty, why did God make it at all and give us free will if he knows already that some of us will destroy ourselves in exercising it?' The question is put by Father Angwin, the non-believing priest in Fludd, Hilary Mantel's short, black, funny novel about Roman Catholicism. Then he remembers that he doesn't believe in God - an unusually quick solution to the Problem of Evil - and goes about his business, dispensing pieces of wisdom to his flock, thinking of ways to avoid the bishop, and looking out for the Devil, in whom he has no difficulty believing. He's seen the Devil, after all: he runs the tobacconist's shop at the bottom of the hill and he smells of sulphur.

LRB 28 April 1994 | PDF Download