Courtney McGrailOur regular reviewers share with readers their choice of books which most impressed them in the last year. The prices quoted are the publishers’ recommended prices, and may vary from source to source.
John F. Deane
One of the puzzling and distracting features of Christianity, today and down the ages, is that the truth that Jesus is and must be at the centre of it all, is so often forgotten.
Early Christianity was not seen as a ‘religion’; Jesus did not come to lay down rules and regulations. He came to offer a meaningful way to live – “I am the way” – that we might know that God is our father and friend, in spite of any evidence to the contrary, and that this God is made visible through the face of Jesus Christ.
Many works on Jesus have been produced. The fine poet Pádraig J. Daly introduced me just this year to the greatest and most essential of these: Jesus: An Historical Approximation, by Jose Antonio Pagola (Convivium Press, £41.65).
The book takes all the scholarship on Jesus that is of importance, sifts it sensitively and with fine scholarship, and presents the contemporary world of Jesus, and Jesus himself, in a most worthwhile and convincing way. It takes Jesus out of the academies and theological study-halls, into an everyday living that offers hope, understanding and, let me say it, delight. A book to savour and read over and over again.
Mary Kenny
The most inspiring book for me this year was Brendan McManus’s Redemption Road – Grieving on the Camino (Orpen Press, €16.99). It is not only a moving and uplifting narrative about how a priest copes with the suicide of a beloved brother, but an informative and well-annotated guide to the Camino to Santiago. It includes a good map, an excellent Spanish-language glossary, further reading lists and a helpful background about Ignatius Loyola’s spiritual exercises. A mixture of poignant human story and spiritual pilgrimage – a remarkable book.
Professor Roger Scruton’s How to be a Conservative (Bloomsbury Continuum, £20.00) is a necessary political and philosophical interpretation of conservatism, wholly in the tradition of Edmund Burke, explaining why we need to value what we have inherited by way of religious and community values. Societies are not constructed by ‘top-down’ diktat, but by the gradual construction of a tradition. Yes, cultures have to evolve and change, but don’t throw out the valuable accretions from the past which anchor us in stability.
Seventy per cent of intellectuals and academic in the Anglo-American world – and doubtless in Ireland too – are liberal-left, so Scruton’s counter-narrative balances prejudices against conservatism. He also explains lucidly the difference between a proper conservative and a free-market liberal.
J. A Gaughan
The most useful book I read this year was John MacMahon’s The Mass. How to Explain what we do on Sunday to our Children and Friends (Author House, €18.00). One of the greatest challenges for those in ministry is the transmission of the Christian message to the rising generations. It is also a primary duty in parenting. Hence the importance of this book.
Its publication is timely. Arguably it is now a more formidable challenge than ever before to transmit the Christian message. Marshall McLuhan’s “global village of instant information” is a reality.
People of all ages and locations are now subject to an onslaught of a melange of attitudes, opinions, fashions and information, most of which is of the bizarre and confusing variety.
In simple language, Fr MacMahon leads the reader step by step through the Mass. Next he examines some of the key words in the Mass and their scriptural background. Finally he discusses the theology of the Real Presence and cognate topics. The author’s treatment is such that his work can be used as a reference book, a teacher’s handbook or a textbook. Also gifting it to friends could encourage them to return to their Sunday Mass!
Anthony Redmond
I have read a number of fine books over the past year but one that particularly impressed me was a superb biography of Thomas Merton, entitled Divine Discontent: The Prophetic Voice of Thomas Merton, by John Moses (Bloomsbury Continuum, £20.00).
Merton is even more popular and relevant today than when he died in 1968 at the age of 53. He was one of the great spiritual guides of the 20th Century and a prolific writer. The book that really brought Merton to international fame was The Seven Storey Mountain which appeared in 1948.
In describing Merton, John Moses writes: “It may well be that some part of Merton’s fascination lies in the fact that he was obviously a man who, while he could speak about God and present the claims of faith and prayer, was nevertheless a man who was wounded, compromised. And yet he is for many more impressive and more enduring because of his vibrant but flawed humanity.”
John Moses’ excellent biography of Thomas Merton really brings him to life and reveals his full humanity. It’s a superb book.Peter Costello
One of the books which stand out over the last year was Brendan McManus’s Redemption Road – Grieving on the Camino (Orpen Press, €16.99).
This provided one of the best and profoundest accounts of the Road to Compostela that I have read, made moving by the fact that the road really was a path towards coming to terms with the past, and the start of another journey, the rest of his life.
The pilgrim paths of Europe as a whole may be more ancient than is often thought.
Extraordinary light on this is cast by Graham Robbin The Ancient Paths (Picadors, £8.99), in which he describes the uncovering of a network of connected prehistoric Celtic routes across much of Western Europe.
Fascinating and insightful, it illuminates in an extraordinary way the civilisation of the European Celts, a culture that Ireland shared little of.
Felix Larkin
The Oxford Handbook of Modern Irish History (Oxford University Press, £95.00), edited by Alvin Jackson, is a compilation of essays on the history of Ireland since circa 1580 written by some of the biggest names in the Irish history firmament today. It is divided into thematic studies and period studies, and is likely to be an essential first port of call for anyone with a serious interest in modern Irish history for many years to come.
It may be invidious to single out individual chapters for notice, but readers of The Irish Catholic will find Marianne Elliott’s study of Faith in Ireland, 1600–2000 of particular interest. I also recommend the concluding chapters on Lemass and his Legacy by Brian Girvin and on the Troubles and their Aftermath in Northern Ireland by Paul Arthur. These bring the story of “Ireland’s split little pea” (to quote James Joyce) up to 2011 and 2007 respectively, but both chapters nevertheless evince a commendable historical perspective.
Despite the book’s great length (nearly 800 pages and 37 chapters), there are inevitably a few gaps. For example, the absence of a chapter on the print media is especially regrettable in view of the body of work which has been undertaken in recent years in this field, much of it under the auspices of the vibrant Newspaper and Periodical History Forum of Ireland.
But the price of this volume (£95) puts it beyond the reach of the wide audience that it richly deserves. One can only hope for a paperback edition.
Ian d’Alton
I’ve found it impossible to choose between two books, both recently published. The first is Roy Foster’s Vivid Faces (Allen Lane, £20), a beautifully-crafted evocation of the lives of those who formed the revolutionary generation in Edwardian Ireland – lesser lights like Rosamond Jacob, Alice Milligan, Liam de Róiste and F. J. Biggar, as well as the giants, such as Pearse, de Valera and MacDonagh.
The book shows how the revolution was, in many ways, the culmination of Ireland as avant-garde, as well as the beginning of something else that was to set the country on a path very different to what these revolutionaries had imagined.
My second is Michael Laffan’s wonderfully illustrated and measured Judging W. T. Cosgrave (Royal Irish Academy, €30.00), which could hardly be more different to Foster’s work. Here is the story of a man who was part of the revolutionary generation, but who became the block-builder of a new state, one which was hemmed in by all sorts of forces and constraints with which the ‘abstract revolutionaries’ of the 1916 Proclamation never had to deal. If we owe the ideal of Ireland to Foster’s subjects, we live in the real world constructed by Laffan’s Cosgrave.
John Wyse Jackson
My best reading for the year drew on past books. In 1933, when Patrick Leigh Fermor was 18, he set off alone to walk through Europe. The journey ended 385 days later, at Istanbul – or Constantinople, as PLF preferred to call it.
The rest of his long life was a full one: he was soldier, scholar, wit, Hellenophile, novelist, travel writer and Byronic man of action – he even swam the Hellespont aged 69. In her fine and hugely entertaining biography, Patrick Leigh Fermor: An Adventure (John Murray, €14.30), Artemis Cooper, daughter of one of PLF’s many devoted friends, does not ignore his weaknesses, but allows his charm and joie-de-vivre to shine through, convincing us to forgive all and to remember him with only delight and affection.
I was also impressed by Salty Baby: A Memoir by Orla Tinsley (Hachette Books Ireland, €13.99). This youthful autobiography is beautifully written, honest, funny, moving and wise. Orla Tinsley takes us through her childhood, education and sexual coming of age with a sensitivity and clarity that is rarely encountered.
She has a particular perspective on the world, for she has the genetic disease cystic fibrosis, and had to confront issues of life and death when still in her teens. She always wanted to write, and has used her gift to become a vocal and effective campaigner for the rights of people with CF. We may pray that the recent scientific advances in CF treatment will rapidly lead the way to a bright future for all those with the illness.
Joe Carroll
It is seven years since Faithful Servant: A Memoir of Brian Cleeve (Lulu, £13.80) was published, but I only came across it this year. I knew Brian slightly from his time in RTÉ, but I had no idea what an extraordinary man he was until I read Jim Bruce’s biography.
One of the famous Cleeve family in Limerick, he was born in Essex to where his father had emigrated. By the time he came to Ireland after World War II, Brian had been an officer in the British Army in Kenya where he was court-martialled and jailed for protesting against the harsh treatment of an African prisoner.
After a brief spell as a spy, he arrived in Ireland where he married a young hairdresser, but soon resumed travelling, ending up in 1950s South Africa. There he started to write his criticism of apartheid led to his expulsion from South Africa and his return to Ireland, where he freelanced and worked for the new RTÉ current affairs programme Seven Days. He also became an Irish fencing champion. During his successful literary career, he wrote 21 novels and over 100 short stories.
A cradle Anglican, he converted to Catholicism in 1942, but became disillusioned with the Church. Sometime in the 1970s he experienced the presence of God in a mystical way. From this came three controversial books in which he reveals direct communications from God on how to live an authentic Christian life. They were critically received and Brian withdrew from his hitherto high-profile life.
He wrote more novels to support his family and published an acclaimed Dictionary of Irish Writers, a long and still important book. Truly an extraordinary man, he died in 2003.