A surprisingly underwhelming and occasionally cloying young adult novel from the acclaimed Australian writer, Judith Clarke, My Lovely Frankie looks back on retired priest Tom Rowland’s teenage years and first months at St. Finbar’s, a Catholic seminary by the sea. There he met and fell in love with the beautiful, radiant Frankie (Francis Maguire). Frankie had come to the seminary from a large, poor, and rigidly devout Catholic family in Western Australia. His zealous father had beaten him mercilessly for three days straight after catching him with a neighbour girl, known to consort with any boy with functioning male parts. Frankie, we are told, has a deep and abiding love of God and an improbably naïve, childlike belief in Heaven, with a capital H. He is kindness personified and responds rapturously to the beauties of nature. He apparently decided to train as a priest in expiation for offending God and the saints, hoping that if he offered up his life in this way he’d gain his father's love.

At St. Finbar’s, Frankie attracts more than Tom’s attention. He catches the eye of Etta, a bizarre-looking, clever, underage and undersized prefect who loves taking notes on others’ infractions, no matter how minor, and reporting these to the rector, a foul-tempered man. Etta’s real name is Brian Cooley, but no one has called him that for years. The spelling is really Etah—i.e., “hate” backwards—according to another student. Etta has no friends, is fiercely ambitious, and determined to rise in the Church. No one has much doubt he will become a bishop, archbishop, or more. Frankie seems an easy target for Etta, as he regularly breaks rules, mostly because of an overflowing kindness of heart and an irrepressible joie de vivre. He gives food to the underfed younger boys and comforts them when they have nightmares or cry for their families at night. Frankie’s also got his eye on a beautiful, dark-haired girl who attends St. Bridget’s School, which is just a little ways away from St. Finbar’s. He regularly goes to a far wall on the seminary grounds so he can watch her at recreation. There are rumours he even meets with her.

For a time, the tension in this story, such as it is, lies in the possibility that Etta will get Frankie expelled. However, it rises to something more than that: Tom realizes that Etta, too, is in love with Frankie. After Frankie calls out the rector on his humiliation of a stammering young student at dinner one evening, it looks like the jig is up for him and that he’ll be gone by noon the next day. Frankie is indeed gone the next day. Most think he’s run away, but Tom knows about his friend's commitment, his “promise” to both his earthly and heavenly fathers that he will stay at the seminar no matter what. It is clear to Tom that Etta is involved in Frankie’s disappearance. Etta is behaving suspiciously, and Tom has seen the prefect’s cassock grimed with a particular type of sand found only at a steep ledge overlooking the sea. Although no body shows up and the police, who see no need to investigate Frankie’s disappearance, suspect no foul play, it’s pretty clear Etta has murdered him. Apparently, love was too complicated a distraction for this singleminded, sociopathic senior student.

Although Clarke’s novel offers an interesting enough, even damning, look into the mid-twentieth-century training, “formation”, of Catholic priests, the story is wanting. A nearly seventy-year-old man’s mooning over a beautiful, idealized first love, his moving in retirement to the town that boy grew up in, and his searching for him throughout his adult life strain credibility to the breaking point. By the end of the book, the refrain “Frankie’s lovely, lovely world” had also frayed my patience. Need I add: I do not recommend this novel? ( )

A masterful, moving story about a teenage boy caught between faith and love, by one of Australia's finest YA writers.