Paddy Sweeny
The attractive married mother of two and the friendly parish priest
Move over Frank McCourt and Angela Ashes. Lynette Robinson is emerging as your worthy replacement.
Lynette’s first work is a chef-d’oeuvre piece of writing. She weaves overcoming four deadly fears inherited from her mother – God, the Devil, her Father and the Catholic Church into true life engrossing theatre.
This sets a plot where a confused and dysfunctional upbringing evolves from drama to drama with each being a small step melding the author into eventually becoming an upstanding and outstanding human being.
You might think that’s enough for a good story ……
Wrong.
Enter the ever friendly Parish Priest.
It has been suggested that the Priesthood can be a dais for confused sexuality. What drove the amiable Father Brian and Lynette together is for the reader to uncover.
How did they deal with their passions with God watching over while the Devil competed for their favours and their own integrity just got in the way?
And what about the sheer armada of busy bodies resident within the pews of piety who interpret as their right the administration of God’s wrath upon those who dare indulge in mortal sin?
The reader will also draw their own conclusions about the church on how they treat their own when they choose to hang up their frock.
A timely book as the might of the Roman Catholic Church is imploding worldwide from its own sins.
This is a refreshing cleverly crafted story of much intrigue and human interest that will lock you in for its entire duration.
It has an undercurrent of inspiration for those who find themselves caught up in the many struggles that life can prevail upon us. Using the platform of the confusion of a manipulative religion, the guilt it relies upon, a dysfunctional upbringing, forbidden love and how to get through this maze to the success and recognition that can be there if one just remains on purpose and finds the way.
A great read. Go buy it today and enjoy the experience.
The General Consensus
A book by New Zealand Author Lynette Robinson about growing up in New Zealand.
With so much paperback rubbish on the market and the release of a horrible and terribly written literary porn trilogy that seems to be topping sales lists, a memoir in two parts by author Lynette Robinson titled Where The Rainbow Fell Down will make for a refreshing break from the trivial fiction that floods the market.
The first half of the story details her life growing up in mid-century New Zealand. Born into a dysfunctional New Zealand Catholic family with a disturbed mother, a controlling father and an abusive step father, she was raised in the post war climate. Political and historical events helped influence and shape her. After leaving home to work at the age of 15, she was coerced into marriage at 18 to a calculating older man. After years of marital unhappiness, she began a career as a Marriage Guidance Counsellor and found unexpected love, joy and escape with a Catholic Priest.
The narrative of this sometimes shocking memoir shows an embracing understanding of the frailty of human existence and the loves and losses we all share. In particular it portrays the challenges New Zealanders faced throughout the developing post-war years, eventually evolving into a better life for all.
As such the story is of sociological, historical significance. Second half of the story – the priest’s tale unfolds. Brian was the only child of an introverted mother preoccupied with concealing her deformity and a passive father who ‘went with the flow’. As a young naive man he was easily coerced into the priesthood and spent years of training in the Seminary where young men were conditioned and shaped for their role; their sexual natures suppressed, attitudes to women distorted and their loyalty to the Church made absolute. Brian questioned all of this but continued.
Brian forms a relationship that challenges his Catholic conditioning and he determines to leave the priesthood. His struggle to escape the Church and the pressures placed on him to remain test this relationship but both remain firm.