Archive for the ‘Catholicism’ Tag
Silence is the same as complicity in Claire Keegan’s short, but impactful novel Small Things like These.
Bill Furlong was lucky; his unwed mother was allowed to stay on as a domestic worker throughout her pregnancy in the prosperous home of Mrs. Wilson, a protestant. The reference to this religion distinction is important.
The young boy grew up, knowing he was different, but also fully aware that he was loved and a beneficiary of the wealthy woman’s kindness. The only consistent male figure in his life was Ned, Mrs. Wilson’s farmhand. Through the years, Bill never learned the identity of his father, but later married and had four daughters.
The setting is a small Irish village during a particularly frigid Christmas season. As a coal merchant Bill is kept busy with deliveries, including one to the nearby convent. There he finds a young, pregnant girl locked in the woodshed. He’s deeply moved and this causes him to think about how often he wondered about his father particularly when he was young.
The terse, yet descriptive narrative is chilling – not just because of cold temperatures, but the unwritten awareness of the Magdalen laundries. Bill is keenly cognizant of all that he has and what life might have otherwise been for him and his mother.
This is a quiet, little, heartfelt work addressing hard life truths.
Small Things Like These
Four Bookmarks
Grove Press, 2021
118 pages, includes acknowledgements
The one-time punk rocker, tattooed, cigarette smoking, gay Sister Holiday, doesn’t fit the mold when it comes to Catholic nuns. In Margot Douaihy debut novel, Scorched Grace, she’s a member of the Sisters of Sublime Blood order, which runs the Saint Sebastian School where she’s the music teacher. The convent adjoins the school.
When not one, but two fires and two deaths occur at the school, Sister Holiday initiates her own investigation convinced authorities aren’t moving fast enough to find the culprit – and avoid potential further harm to her school and church community.
Set in New Orleans, the storylines moves between Holiday’s past and what at first appears as her new-found faith. In fact, one of the strengths of Douaihy’s writing lies in slowly revealing the nun’s deepening convictions, in spite of her rebellious personality and the obstacles she encounters in her attempts to solve the crimes.
The list of suspects is credible, even as evidence points to Sister Holiday herself. The investigating police officers are convinced of her guilt. While the fire investigator, Magnolia Riveaux, is less ready to pin the blame on Holiday.
Descriptions of the Big Easy, the humidity and other characters are vivid. Sister Holiday is tenacious and the authorities consider her a pest. Her relationship with the other nuns (there aren’t many) are a way the author deftly merges the past and present. Sister Holiday is, indeed, the sum of her history: colorful tats and all.
Based on the subtitle, Sister Holiday isn’t being cloistered anytime soon.
Scorched Grace: A Sister Holiday Mystery
Three-and-a-half bookmarks
Gillian Flynn Books, 2023
307 pages
There is something both intriguing and off-putting about the title of Patricia Lockwood’s memoir, Priestdaddy. Greg, her father was, indeed, a priest in the Catholic Church. This was possible, she writes because her father “snuck past” the rule prohibiting priests from marrying. The real loophole is that a married minister of another denomination can, apparently, seek dispensation from Rome to be ordained as a priest. Pope Benedict XVI approved the request. Father Greg didn’t have to annul his marriage, nor abandon his children. Although, in many ways, as evident in the family stories Lockwood shares, he did.
The author’s tone is humorous and irony is evident throughout. Yet, there is too much cleverness. Her dad’s faith is never depicted as having much depth. Perhaps it is her effort to reveal him as an ordinary, not a holy, man. Even in that regard, he is far from conventional. After all, he lounges around in his boxers and has an extensive (and expensive) guitar collection. In fact he purchases a rare guitar soon after telling his daughter there aren’t funds for her college education.
Despite the title, Lockwood doesn’t focus her attention entirely on her dad. Her mother, her sisters, nieces, nephews and her husband also have prominent places in the narrative. So does a seminarian, who isn’t married and likely does not have kids.
Lockwood is, in fact, a published, award-winning poet. The images and emotions she conveys are vivid, but her often self-mocking tone and airing family laundry quickly wear thin.
Priestdaddy
Three Bookmarks
Riverhead Books, 2017
333 pages
The Blue Page Special 