Simon Called Peter by Robert Keable

Simon Called Peter by Robert Keable

Publisher: A Public Domain Book (2012)

346 pages, eBook (Available for Free)

Book Rating: 4 Stars

Content Ratings:

Violence: Mild-Moderate-Brutal

Swearing: Clean-Light-Filthy

Sexual Content: White-Pink-Red

Summary:

Peter is a naive, idealistic London clergyman who has been sheltered and isolated by his station in life, so when he joins the military as a chaplain in World War I and is stationed in France, he is shocked by what he finds is the real world, and suffers a crisis of faith as a result, helped along by his attraction to a flirtatious and worldly young nurse, named Julie.

My Thoughts:

This book was banned for its connection to an adulterous couple who were murdered in New Jersey in 1922, and F. Scott Fitzgerald referred to this novel in The Great Gatsby as “terrible stuff,” so naturally I had to read it and see if it truly was as bad as everyone thought. I actually found it very enjoyable. There are some parts that are so thick with British slang that it was a bit muddy for a modern American to wade through at times, but the story and the characters were definitely interesting. Peter’s struggles with his faith can get a little academic and long-winded, but his interactions with the other officers and the young women he meets in France, and the impact of those interactions on him were very entertaining. I’m not sure I agree with the answers Peter seems to champion to his questions of faith, nor did I feel his arguments were particularly persuasive, but it did seem realistic for a person who had been so sheltered to overcompensate and swing wide in the opposite direction. I didn’t really care for Julie all that much, but as the novel focused on Peter and his thoughts, it didn’t matter that much that I didn’t warm to her. I’m not sure how I feel about the ending, as it had a ‘to be continued’ feel to it, so I suppose the story will pick up where it left off, with the sequel, Recompence.

Edition Notes:

This is a no-frills, public domain edition available for free. There are no annotations or references, but it is a perfectly readable copy of the book and includes the author’s note to the reader that precedes the main text. Perfectly adequate for anyone wanting to give this book a read to see what all the fuss is about.

Quotes:

“London lay as if washed with water-colour that Sunday morning, light blue sky and pale dancing sunlight wooing the begrimed stones of Westminster like a young girl with an old lover.” -Robert Keable, Simon Called Peter pg. 2

“She had found him admirable and likable; he found her highly respectable and seemingly unapproachable. From which cold elements much more may come than one might suppose.” -Robert Keable, Simon Called Peter pg. 5

“That magic sun shone on the silver of the breakfast-table, and lit up the otherwise heavy room.” -Robert Keable, Simon Called Peter pg. 6

“He thought he had never seen her look more handsome and . . . He could not find the word: thought of ‘solid,’ and then smiled at the thought. It did not fit in with the sunlight on her hair.” -Robert Keable, Simon Called Peter pg. 8

“England looked extraordinarily homely and pleasant. It was the known; he was conscious of rushing at fifty miles an hour into the unknown.” -Robert Keable, Simon Called Peter pg. 26

“He was aware, dimly, that for the past five years situations in which he had been had been dominated by him, and that he, as a clergyman, had been continually the centre of concern. Talk, conduct, and company had been rearranged when he came in, and it had happened so often that he had ceased to be aware of it. But now he was a mere unit, of no particular importance whatever. No one dreamed of modifying himself particularly because a clergyman was present. Peter clung to the belief that it was not altogether so, but he was sufficiently conscious of it. And he was conscious of liking it, of wanting to sink back in it as a man sinks back in an easy-chair. He felt he ought not to do so, and he made a kind of mental effort to pull himself together.” -Robert Keable, Simon Called Peter pg. 33

“It suddenly struck him that he had talked rot in the pulpit, talked of things of which he knew nothing.” -Robert Keable, Simon Called Peter pg. 55

“It was as if she had gradually become complete mistress of a house, and then had suddenly discovered a new room into which she peeped for a minute before it was lost to her again and the door shut.” -Robert Keable, Simon Called Peter pg. 57

“One comes away feelin’ one can stand a bit more for the sake of the decent, clean things of life.” -Robert Keable, Simon Called Peter pg. 60

“I’m like a salesman with a shop full of goods that nobody wants because they don’t fulfill the advertisement. And I never felt more utterly alone in my life.” -Robert Keable, Simon Called Peter pg. 66

“True, there seemed little connection between dinner with a couple of madcap girls in a French restaurant and religion, but there was one.” -Robert Keable, Simon Called Peter pg. 103

“‘You don’t know what love is at all,’ he said. She faced him fairly and unashamed. ‘I do,’ she said, ‘It’s an animal passion for the purpose of populating the earth. And if you ask me, I think it is rather a dirty trick on the part of God.’” -Robert Keable, Simon Called Peter pg. 131

“We can’t help ourselves, and the best thing is to take our pleasures when we can find them.” -Robert Keable, Simon Called Peter pg. 132

“There’s only one real rule left in life for most of us, Peter, and that’s this: ‘Be a good pal, and don’t worry.’” -Robert Keable, Simon Called Peter pg. 132

“He was apparently under the delusion that he must work out his own salvation, whereas, in point of fact, it was being worked out for him scientifically and religiously.” -Robert Keable, Simon Called Peter pg. 146

“He neither condoled nor exhorted; rather he watched with an almost shy interest the other’s inward battle.” -Robert Keable, Simon Called Peter pg. 164

“He was less like an orthodox parson than he had ever been, and yet he had never thought so much about religion.” -Robert Keable, Simon Called Peter pg. 165

“It came, then, to this, that he had not so much changed towards Hilda as changed towards life.” -Robert Keable, Simon Called Peter pg. 165

“He did not serve the devil; it was much more that he had never seen any master to serve. And I could do nothing. I had no master to show him.” -Robert Keable, Simon Called Peter pg. 165

“I want you to realise that I feel as if I had never seen life before. I feel as if I had been shown all my days a certain number of pictures and told that they were the real thing, or given certain descriptions and told that they were true—I have been playing in a fool’s paradise all these years, and I’ve got outside the gate. I am distressed and terrified, I think, but underneath it all I am very glad . . .” -Robert Keable, Simon Called Peter pg. 167

“You take life too strenuously. Why can’t you saunter through it like I do?” -Robert Keable, Simon Called Peter pg. 168

“He takes refuge in the things you throw overboard.” -Robert Keable, Simon Called Peter pg. 177

“I am going to eat and drink with publicans and sinners; maybe I shall find my Master still there.” -Robert Keable, Simon Called Peter pg. 183

“Here he was really safe and remote and master, with a thousand servants and a huge palace at his beck and call, and all for a few pounds! It was absurd, but he thought to himself that he was feeling civilised for the first time, perhaps.” -Robert Keable, Simon Called Peter pg. 259