news, views & reviews
reviewed by John Murphy Henry Harland is a little-known American-born Catholic writer who lived in turn-of-the-century England. Though relatively obscure today, he was hugely popular in his own time—among the literati for his work in editing the highly influential Yellow Book quarterly, whose art editor was Aubrey Beardsley, and among the hoi polloi for light romantic [...]
reviewed by John Murphy There is something appropriate about David Lodge writing on the ruefully comic trials and tribulations of deafness. He is a master chronicler of the seriocomic frustrations of daily life, whether it be the sexual frustrations of young Catholics post Vatican II in How Far Can You Go, or the family frustrations [...]
by Ian McEwan reviewed by John Murphy Ian McEwan has built his reputation on elegant sentences describing horrific events: the abduction of a child, an out-of-control air balloon, an imagined rape, a break-in. In novels like Enduring Love, Atonement, and Saturday, these are personal calamities, domestic disasters, that burst lava-like from the dormancy of dailiness. [...]
reviewed by John Murphy How Fiction Works is a presuming title for a slim little book, made more conspicuous by a chapter called “A Brief History of Consciousness.” Oh, is that all? But the book’s author is James Wood, the New Yorker’s perspicacious literary critic, and his Preface quickly allays any fears of gassy pretension [...]
reviewed by John Murphy Some folks think the Catholic devotion to Our Lady (Notre Dame) is near-sacrilegious. Who knows what they would make of the Catholic devotion to Notre Dame football. Ralph McInerny’s new Knight Brothers mystery, The Green Revolution, takes place on the Notre Dame campus during the football team’s worst season in recorded [...]
by Tobias Wolff reviewed by John Murphy Our Story Begins collects new and older short-stories by Tobias Wolff, one of America’s acknowledged masters of the genre. Wolff-hounds will recognize canonical works like “Hunters in the Snow,” “Bullet in the Brain,” and “In the Garden of the North American Martyrs,” short-form masterpieces that have long-since established Wolff’s reputation as [...]
by John Murphy Having just read a collection of masterful short-stories by Tobias Wolff, the issue of what makes storytelling such an intrinsic, necessary part of the human condition has been at the forefront of my mind. An article in the most recent issue of Scientific American approaches this age-old question from a left-brained perspective… Read the rest of [...]
The Easter edition of Dappled Things (an online literary journal for young Catholics) features an essay written by yours truly. My piece is a reflection on the whole MySpace phenomenon from a Christian perspective. Keep in mind the Flannery quote: “I don’t deserve any credit for turning the other cheek as my tongue is always [...]
reviewed by John Murphy Neverwhere is an entertaining dark fantasy from celebrated writer, Neil Gaiman. The wild and whirling world he creates from the material of urban London — where unsuspecting folks can fall “between the cracks” and end up in the surreal London Below — owes a debt to GK Chesterton’s delightful and outlandish [...]
reviewed by John Murphy Anthony Hope’s Prisoner of Zenda is a classic swashbuckler in the fun-loving tradition of Rafael Sabatini (Captain Blood, Scaramouche). The book’s enduring success has led to several stage and screen adaptations, including a popular version from 1937 starring Ronald Colman. It’s easy to see why Prisoner has captured so many imaginations. [...]
The Satirical Rogue Evelyn Waugh wrote Decline and Fall, his first book, at the age of twenty-five. Most young writers compare the giddy throes of that initial burst of creativity to a kind of drunkenness—young, brash, and brimming with authorial enthusiasm, they are intoxicated by the thrill of artistic discovery. Well, Evelyn Waugh was [...]
reviewed by John Murphy Home Truths is a bite-sized country manor comedy of manners adapted from the novelist’s stage play. Its theatrical origins are apparent in the three-act structure, the closed-in location (a country cottage), and the dialogue-heavy scenes. Considering how closely it resembles the script for a stage production, one wonders why Lodge felt [...]
reviewed by John Murphy The Colour of Blood is a tight, page-turning Catholic thriller in the Graham Greene tradition. The opening sequence hits the ground running: Cardinal Bem, head of the Church in an unnamed Soviet bloc country, is being chauffered back to his residence when “He saw, peripherally, a black car racing very close [...]
François Mauriac, winner of the Nobel Prize and recipient of France’s Legion d’honneur, was among the last century’s most pre-eminent men of letters, and a devout Roman Catholic.Vipers’ Tangle is one of Mauriac’s most famous works, a book of bruising beauty that explores man’s capacity for love and hate, bitterness and forgiveness, sin and redemption, [...]
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