Collins provides some laugh-out-loud moments, but his characters’ resolutions are often poignant and bittersweet—with a surprise or two thrown in.
High Point: Collins develops his characters so well that you may start to look at them as old friends.
Low Point: There’s no sequel.
Author: Norman Collins
Publication Date: 1951
Genre: Fiction
Project Gutenberg: Not available
LibriVox: Not available
Movie/TV Adaptation: None
Norman Collins’ Children of the Archbishop is a creative and clever story that’s likely to capture your interest early and hold it until the very last page. Collins intertwines a number of distinct, but related, story lines throughout the book. He skillfully brings them all to resolution by the end.
His characters are so well developed. The story takes place over a period of 18 years, so you get to know them all quite well as some develop and mature or as others age and grow old. Collins provides some laugh-out-loud moments, but his characters’ resolutions are often poignant and bittersweet—with a surprise or two thrown in.
Collins employs a personal and rather informal writing style. At times, he addresses the reader directly to help steer the reader’s perspective of upcoming events. At other times, he fires off a series of consecutive short incomplete sentences, almost staccato in nature, as a speaker might do when they are driving home an important point.
If you’ve not read a Norman Collins novel before, Children of the Archbishop might be a suitable introduction. As it did for me, it may generate a curiosity to explore his other works.
