About the Book
Rome, 1953. David is young, handsome, charismatic and sworn to celibacy. He is freshly ordained, and about to return to England to begin life as a priest. Devotion to God is all he’s ever known.
In London, Margaret is entangled in an impossible love affair. Committed to living on her own terms without sacrificing her faith, she becomes drawn to a women’s movement challenging the archaic rules of the Church.
When their lives are thrown together at a Catholic college in a quiet village, an undeniable connection forms between them. And so begins a story of forbidden love, sacrifice and secrets, with consequences that will reverberate across the generations.
Decades later, she is being cared for by her grandson, who has just discovered the strange truth of his family history.
Format: Hardcover (288 pages) Publisher: Picador
Publication date: 19th February 2026 Genre: Historical Fiction
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My Review
At the funeral of his great-uncle in 2018, Adrian learns something unexpected about his grandparents, namely that his grandfather David was once a Catholic priest. As he begins caring for his elderly grandmother who is suffering from dementia, he tries to draw out the story of his grandparents’ relationship and marriage, revealed in a series of flashbacks. We experience David’s childhood, his time at a seminary in Rome and the ritual of his ordination. It’s a life that seems likely to follow a prescribed path of absolute devotion to the Catholic faith and celibacy.
‘He liked being told what to do. He liked waking up knowing what he had to wear in the morning. He liked the awareness of himself as being in a hierarchy, with people above and below him. He liked all the secret codes and small rituals… He liked his presence being demanded in a particular place at a particular time, and the fact there would be consequences if you didn’t appear.’
It could not be more different from Margaret’s freer, more adventurous life including multiple sexual encounters.
David and Margaret first meet in the 1960s at a theology college where Margaret is a teacher and David the priest. They are both devoted to their Catholic faith but Margaret is not afraid to challenge the Church’s doctrine, specifically relating to the place of women in the Church. What starts as discussion, debate and a sharing of ideas – first in college rooms, then in David’s house – transforms into something much deeper. Before long though the romantic and physical attraction between them cannot be denied, leaving David with an agonising decision. To be with Margaret in the way he desires means leaving the Church. He is left in doubt about the brutality of the process of laicization.
I adored the way the author described the little details of their life together, the gentle give and take that occurs in a long, loving relationship.
‘She thought of the thousand ways they had shown their love to one another, and been unnoticed, else misapprehended. Cups of tea in their multitudes. Crooked inventions of his to ease her in her pastimes. The plank full of nails bent at an angle, for her spools of thread…. Sunday roasts. Drinks mixed and brought to her desk. Records played, and dancing. So much dancing. Long drives, late at night, to fetch one another from this or that place. Jumpers knitted. Quilts stitched, spread over both of their knees on winter evenings. Reading to one another.’
I found Margaret’s decline from the vibrant, articulate woman she once was to someone requiring help with the most intimate of tasks quite heartbreaking. And although I was saddened by how the once passionate relationship between David and Margaret changed over the years, I could also appreciate its realism.
To a certain extent David always remained for me the ‘private man’ of the book’s title. I didn’t feel I got to know him as completely as I did Margaret. However, I could completely understand how David would be attracted to the intelligent, uncompromising, forthright Margaret.
Based on the story of the author’s own grandparents, A Private Man is a tender, moving love story about two people who, despite the obstacles in their way, could not imagine a life without each other.
I received a advance review copy courtesy of Macmillan via NetGalley.
In three words: Tender, intimate, moving
Try something similar: Small Pleasures by Clare Chambers
About the Author
Stephanie Sy-Quia was born in 1995 and is based in London. Her writing and criticism have been published in The Guardian, The White Review, The Boston Review, Granta, The TLS, and others. She is a Ledbury Poetry Critic and has twice been shortlisted for the FT Bodley Head Essay Prize.
Her debut Amnion, published by Granta Poetry in 2021, received a Somerset Maugham Award and was a Poetry Book Society Winter Recommendation; was longlisted for the Rathbones Folio and RSL Ondaatje Prizes; and won the Forward Prize for Best First Collection. She is the recipient of an Eric Gregory Award.
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