The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner (New York Review Books)

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Summary: The Private Memoirs and Confessions of a Justified Sinner
Review: This is one Excellent Book.

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Summary: an author of superb instinct
Review: This novel provokes some questions. For me the first and more important is religion seems to be a unavoidable need for mankind, but as all primary needs is a powerful source of war and division. We have the cruel, never ending wars between Catholics and Reformists in Europe over 100 years, and nowadays this is seen in Middle East, so religion, if not treated carefully is a poisonous drug capable to divide countries. Well, in this novel I dare to say religion has also the power to divide the brain, the mind, the soul or as you want, of oneself, and these is named today psychopathy, but was believed to be witchcraft at the times of James Hogg. We see: Robert is a Scottish man educated in Calvinism, a branch of Reformism that promises eternal salvation only for God will. In these beliefs the man saves or condemns his soul without that his facts, good or bad, counts for nothing. I was born Catholic and I think there are aberrations in all forms of extreme, fanatic religiosity. Of course all these isn't enough to provoke a disease, but yes if the believer is previously feeble, if he's prone to unbalance his mind. This is the case with Robert: he's is born as an illegitimate son. His family rejects him as they thinks he's bewitched or almost... and effectively he then becomes bewitched, this is, simply, mentally ill. The author shows an exceptional intuition and observation talent for human behaviour in describing what he couldn't know what was, but however telling it superbly: Robert, under an excessive pressure has a breakdown and a vision that seems an encounter with a "benefic" stranger which promises him no matter all the crimes he commit, his soul is sure destined to heaven. Objectively, all this translates in a series of unexplainable crimes and murders people doesn't understand, but the hidden reason is found many years later in the private diary of this justified sinner, surely an schizofrenic who had an hallucination. Extraordinary work by a writer whose biography says he lacked education excepting these that nature gives to whose which are geniuses or almost.