Courtney McGrailIn these pages some of our regular reviewers provide a brief appreciation of their best most interesting books of the year, a selection of very varied reading which others will also enjoy.
Frank Litton
We cannot know the modern world without knowledge of the religious conflicts that fractured Christianity and put paid to Christendom. Carlos M.M. Eire’s new book Reformations: The Early Modern World 1450–1650 (Yale University Press, £25.00) is a masterful guide to the transition from the medieval to the modern.
Eire is neither on the offence, nor the defence. He defends no position, but seeks to represent the views of the various reformers, both within and without the Catholic Church, and their followers. He details the intersections of religion, politics and economics while avoiding the temptation to explain religion away as reflection of these ‘deeper’ realities. And he is a wonderful writer, the book a real page turner – all 767 of them.
We are surely at the beginning of a transition as momentous as that recounted by Eire. The French philosopher and sociologist of science, Bruno Latour, is foremost among those analysing the limitations of modernity and pointing the way forward. He argues that we are in the midst of a transition as momentous as that studied by Eire. Gerard de Vries provides an engaging introduction to his work that attracts increasing attention in Bruno Latour (Polity Press / Key Contemporary Thinkers, £16.99).
Anthony Redmond
When the well-known Jesuit writer and theologian, Fr Michael Paul Gallagher, was told in January of last year that he had cancer he began to write this book expressing his thoughts and feelings on the subject. The result is a superb, inspirational and deeply moving book, Into Extra Time: Living through the Final Stages of Cancer and Jottings Along the Way (Longman & Todd, €12.99).
He died on the November 6, 2015, but this wonderful book will be an important legacy. Reading this book one can identify with all the uncertainty, confusion and fear that his illness must have brought. I found myself truly moved and edified by his faith in a loving God with whom Fr Gallagher clearly had a very deep personal relationship.
He writes: “I know myself accompanied, gently. I feel humanly alone and have decided to tell the full story to very few…Never has faith seemed so real. This is not out of fear (as some atheists might suggest) but out of a discovery of the quiet reality of God with me in all this.” He was a dedicated priest, an excellent writer and a truly wonderful human being.
Felix M. Larkin
David Rieff’s brilliant book, In Praise of Forgetting (Yale University Press, £14.99), resonated strongly with me in this year when we commemorated the centenary of the 1916 Rising.
He emphasises what should be obvious to all, that a nation’s “collective memory” – so-called “public history” – is an artificial construct. He writes that “the world does not have memories; nor do nations; nor do groups of people. Individuals remember, full stop.”
He deprecates the takeover of history by “collective memory”, arguing that it amounts to the takeover of history by politics – and we have seen this phenomenon at play this year.
But Rieff also insists that a greater knowledge of history – desirable in itself, especially as an antidote to “collective memory” – does not necessarily lead to a more peaceful and harmonious world. Often the contrary is the case. His book is, therefore, uncomfortable reading for the professional historian as well as for those engaged in engineering “public history”.
Rieff’s argument is, however, flawed in one respect. To ask us to forget the past is to ask the impossible. We must look instead to what Lincoln called “the better angels of our nature” and make a conscious effort to confront the past, interrogate it and then move on. Even though we still remember, we should simply disregard our memories and do the right thing in spite of them.
The model is King Priam in Michael Longley’s poem ‘Ceasefire’, about the ending of the Troubles in Northern Ireland: “I will get down on my knees and do what must be done / And kiss Achilles’ hand, the killer of my son.”
Mary Kenny
Sarah Bakewell’s “At the Existentialist Café – Freedom, Being and Apricot Cocktails” was a most enjoyable approach to existentialist philosophy. Ms Bakewell puts philosophers – Camus, Heidigger, Sartre, de Beauvoir and others – into the context of their lives and times.
It also opened up, for me at least, the tragic and yet redemptive story of Edith Stein, a significant budding philosopher in 1920s Germany. Her subject was the phenomenology of empathy. She was disadvantaged by being a woman – and Jewish. Then she read the life of Teresa of Avila, converted to Catholicism, and became a Carmelite nun.
The convent tried to protect her when the Nazis gained power, and transferred her to the Netherlands, but alas, she, along with her sister Rosa, was taken to Auschwitz in 1942 where both were killed. The nuns guarded her papers for posterity. As Sr Teresa Benedicta she was canonised by John Paul II in 1998. Most moving indeed.
Peter Hegarty
John Banville loves Dublin, a ‘place of magical promise’ to him as a little boy, as he reveals in Time Pieces: A Dublin Memoir, with evocative photographs by Paul Joyce (Hachette Ireland, € 24.99)
As the Wexford train pulled out of the station the young Banville would press his face against the grimy windows to hide his tears, already looking forward to the next visit to the city.
With wit and affection he recalls good times and good company. A close friend of his was the liberal Catholic broadcaster Seán Mac Réamoinn, who once replied to Banville’s enquiry about his health by comparing himself to a census: ‘broken down by age, sex and religion’.
Ian d’Alton
Historian Roy Foster, just-retired Professor of Irish History at Oxford University, is often characterised as the arch-revisionist incarnate. For those who want their prejudices confirmed and who feel a need to keep their enemies closer than their friends, Uncertain Futures – Essays about the Irish Past for Roy Foster (edited with scrupulous care by Senia Paseta, and in an elegant volume published by Oxford University Press) will doubtless fit the bill.
There are no fewer than three essays about Foster which, taken together, go some distance in explaining who he is, what moves him – and why he is probably the most significant historian of his generation.
The 19 other essays cover diversae topics: intellectual history, the economics of the Land War, the poets Yeats and Ezra Pound at Rapallo, Italy in 1928, and the relationships between Irish and Scottish Home Rule / Independence movements.
As a whole these essays are not bad testimonials to Foster’s skills as an historian. But he is also a writer who happens to be a historian; and the quality of the writing in this book is an appropriate tribute to his effortless way with words. There is something for scholars and laypeople alike in this collection.
Thomas Morrisey SJ
The historical work that I found of particular interest was The Catholic Church and the Campaign for Emancipation in Ireland and England (Four Courts Press 2016) by Ambrose Macauley.
The particular interest of this well researched book is that it supplies in one volume the long struggle for Catholic Emancipation from the viewpoint of English Catholics as well of Irish Catholics while also conveying the views of government ministers and of the Vatican
The second book I enjoyed was very different, a novel by Robert Harris entitled The Conclave. It is a remarkable reconstruction of a conclave to elect a new pope, told largely from the perspective of the dean appointed to ensure the smooth running of the election according to established procedures.
It is a tribute to the reputation of Harris for careful research that he received much information from the Vatican on the running of a conclave, the kinds of problems that can arise, the rules and procedures to be followed, and the way voting had gone in some actual conclaves.
The story is a gripping one as, following the death of a liberal pope, many cardinals wish to appoint a strong right-wing candidate, while there is also a strong body of support for a prominent African cardinal and the prospect looms of a first black pope, others seek a candidate reflecting an intermediate position.
These various interests emerge during discussion and in the voting, and the days pass with contending rivalries and procedural problems without the required number of votes being reached by any candidate. The tension continues until it is resolved in a surprising outcome.
Christopher Moriarty
Published just before last Christmas, Bridges of Dublin ( Dublin City Council, €25.00) is technically a 2015 book – but it is so good and so beautiful that it easily qualifies as one of the best books of this year.
Its sub-title is The remarkable story of Dublin’s Liffey Bridges. The authors are Annette Black and Michael B. Barry, an historian with a background in engineering.
Three aspects of the book contribute to its appeal. The first is a very readable account of the history of each of the 24 crossings of the Liffey within the bounds of Dublin’s fair city. The second is the quality of the illustrations, mostly superb modern photographs but also a goodly selection of old prints and paintings.
The third is something of exceptional interest to the technically-minded: an account of the engineering aspects of each bridge. And, finally, the publisher is one far removed from the trade of book-production, no less a body than the ancient and august Dublin City Council.
Joe Carroll
Adam Sisman took on the tough task of writing the biography of John Le Carré and it turned out to be as gripping as one of the master’s own spy stories. And yet Sisman’s exhaustive account, written with the cooperation of his subject with full access to all his files and letters, was only published for a short while when Le Carré (real name David Cornwell) produced his own autobiography, The Pigeon Tunnel (Viking, £20.00). Surely that is a mystery in itself.
Sisman’s is said by those who have read both books to be the best account of the life of the former diplomat and one-time agent of both MI5 and MI6. In Sisman’s version, Le Carré’s father, who spent time in jail for fraud, is even more interesting than the son to whom he caused continual embarrassment until his death. The father once said to Le Carré that without him he would not have become such a famous writer.
With Sisman’s help it is possible to see how much the father was an influence, even obsession, of Le Carré in some of his books, such as The Perfect Spy.
John Wyse Jackson
With depressing regularity, volumes about Ireland’s half dozen or so most celebrated writers come thudding through the letterbox. So it was with a certain sense of déjà vu that I picked up Emer O’Sullivan’s The Fall of the House of Wilde: Oscar Wilde and His Family (Bloomsbury, £14.99 in paperback). How wrong I was! Drawing on much previously neglected material, notably the letters of Jane Wilde, the book is full of fresh insights.
O’Sullivan gives Wilde’s parents the rare accolade of taking them seriously, treating them as scholars and activists rather than as snobbish eccentrics: their antiquarian, nationalist and ethnographic activities became a foundation stone of the Celtic Revival.
The depiction here of Oscar’s life and work is also innovative, with emphasis on the influences of his Irish background and his loyalty to his family, and it’s a revelation to see how directly the tensions and complications of his life fed into the late plays.
And as a real bonus, the book contains the first coherent account of the life of Oscar’s brilliant but alcoholic brother, Willie.