news, views & reviews
Posted in Literary Biography on Jan 30th, 2006
Reviewed by Debra Murphy
(order from Amazon: Evelyn Waugh: A Biography)
This 1975 biography of Catholic convert and novelist Evelyn Waugh, one of the luminaries of the so-called “Catholic Literary Revival” of the first half of the twentieth century, was written by Waugh’s contemporary, friend and fellow Catholic, English writer Christopher […]
Posted in Suspense/Thriller, Young Adult on Jan 23rd, 2006
Reviewed by Debra Murphy
Author Regina Doman has re-worked the venerable “Snow White and Rose Red” fairy tale, one of the Grimm Brothers’ most memorable, into a cracking good suspense yarn for young adults, and the young at heart of all ages.
Blanche and Rose Brier are a Sense-and-Sensibility pair of teenagers newly arrived, with their Widowed […]
Posted in Classics, Historical on Jan 20th, 2006
Reviewed by Christine J. Murray
Robert Hugh Benson’s historical novel about the persecution of Catholics under the rule of Elizabeth I is one of his more popular even to this day. He wrote Come Rack! Come Rope! after being invited to preach at a retreat held at Padley in 1911—the site of a hidden chapel used […]
“An Insignificant Little Priest”:
A Reflection on George Bernanos’ Diary of a Country Priest
by Rachel Murphy
“Mine is a parish like all the rest.”
This novel, small and unassuming, catches one off-guard; the perceptive country Curé, in the opening pages of his diary, speaks of the “stale discouragement” of his small parish; of loneliness; of parishioners who […]
Posted in Classics, Historical on Jan 20th, 2006
Reviewed by Rachel Murphy
I happened to pick up this little novella while staying at the home of friends of mine while they were away. (They had set aside their little “library” room for me—a dangerous prospect!)
Written in the style of a letter from an “eyewitness” to the execution of the 16 Carmelite martyrs of […]