If you're looking to get a Christmas gift for a friend who loves reading, and is also interested in priests, then you should select a novel that features priests as a leading character. A heavy, non-fiction, religious text is not normally a great Christmas gift, but a really engaging novel is. Below is a selection of three different novels that feature priests as main characters. The list will include a few different types of settings, from literary western, to pastoral novels about rural French life, to one of the most celebrated horror novels in the modern age.

Blood Meridian By Cormac McCarthy

Cormac McCarthy has received a lot of attention in recent years, namely for his novel The Road as well as the film No Country For Old Men (which was based on his novel of the same name.) However, he has been respected for many years in literary circles. Harold Bloom named him one of the greatest living writers, and called his novel Blood Meridian the greatest novel by a living American writer. The novel concerns a band of cutthroats running wild in the old west. One of the main characters is a character who is an ex-priest. This character engages in philosophical debates with the other main characters, pertaining to free will, evil, and faith. If you're friend loves literary fiction, they will love this book.

The Diary Of A Country Priest by Georges Bernanos

This novel is much more subdued than Blood Meridian. It focuses on a county priest and his trials as he works with a rural parish in France. The priest is suffering from an excruciating stomach cancer. The novel details his inner turmoil as he struggles to deal with immense physical and emotional pain as well as the doubts that the pain bring on. It's a very philosophical novel, but it's also a beautiful depiction of rural France. If your friend prefers Jane Austin and Flaubert to the heavy, dark writers that McCarthy is similar to (Melville, Dickens, and Joyce) then Bernanos's masterpiece is an excellent choice.

The Exorcist

If your friend is not into heavy, literary works such as those that McCarthy and Bernanos wrote, then they might like The Exorcist. This is a tremendous novel that was the basis for the world-famous horror film. It was written by a man who studied with the Jesuit priests while he was a student at Georgetown. He used this familiarity to give the novel a tremendous sense of authenticity. It's a horror novel, but also one that gives an excellent examination of the day-to-day life of a regular priest. Scenes include the priest interacting with the poor in his neighborhood, visiting his mother in her tiny apartment, and comforting a friend.

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