SOURCE: A review of Black Robe, in The New York Times, March 25, 1985, p. C17.

In the following review, Lehmann-Haupt praises Moore's characterizations, his "unadorned but evocative prose," and his depiction of spiritual conflict in Black Robe.

As Brian Moore explains in an author's note that precedes the opening of his unusual new novel, Black Robe: "A few years ago, in Graham Greene's Collected Essays, I came upon his discussion of The Jesuits of North America, the celebrated work by the American historian Francis Parkman (1823–1893)."

A passage cited by Greene, about the extraordinary dedication of one particular 17th-century Jesuit Father, led Mr. Moore to read Parkman's great work and to discover that his main source was the Relations, the voluminous letters that the Jesuits sent back to their superiors in France. In the Relations themselves—and in "their deeply moving reports" revealing "an unknown and unpredictable world"—Mr. Moore...