news, views & reviews
Posted in Literary on Mar 6th, 2007
reviewed by John Murphy
The Sacred and the Profane
A Month of Sundaysgives the initial impression of being a tossed-off trifle, as if a bit of Updike’s light verse had grown fat and sassy, full-bellied, and was given room to stretch like a self-satisfied cat on a windowsill. Updike, already a luminary of American letters by the […]
Posted in Comedy/Satire, Literary on Feb 8th, 2007
Snakes and Ladders
David Lodge’s Souls and Bodies won the Whitbread Book of the Year award in 1980. Whether it deserved such an honor or not, it is certainly a well-crafted account of British Catholicism circa the era of Vatican II.
Lodge charts the spiritual growth (“decay” might be more accurate) of a group of British […]
Reviewed by John Murphy
Yours, Now and Forever
The last priest in Mexico is on the run. The Church has gone underground, outlawed by the incumbent Powers-that-Be. Owning a rosary or a prayer book will land you in jail. Faithful Catholics thirst for the Mass, for the Eucharist, for God, but must content themselves with […]
Posted in Anti-Catholic, Literary, Theological/Philosophical on Nov 25th, 2006
reviewed by Kevin Murphy
The Menace of Oblivion
Everyman begins “around the grave.” And it stays there for the course of its brief length, stewing in angst and mortal fear. Clearly, it is the work of a man coming to grips with his own mortality – a terrified […]
Posted in Literary on Oct 8th, 2006
The Celluloid Void
reviewed by John Murphy
I love going to the movies. I even flatter myself I’ve acquired over time a connoisseur’s taste for excellence, but the truth is that I don’t always discriminate between high art and low art. Any kind of movie, any kind of genre, will do. The hypnotic experience of sitting in […]