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"'Colm Toibin writes beautifully in a spare style that allows for plain description, high humour and effects that are carefully toned. He is at once an honest uncertain pilgrim with a press card and a sense of devitment, and a son on an Oedipal trail' Sean Dunne, Irish Times"
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Part travelogue, part autobiography, part historical document, this is Colm Tóibín at his finest and most insightful.
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11 of 12 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Toibin travels through various catholic regions of Europe generally at times of high catholic festivals. The journey takes us from an Irish past in the 1950s-60s to Croatia's nationalist catholicism, a Regensburg (FRG) theology professor, an Old Firm match in Glasgow (Celtic win), repeatedly to Poland and also to the Czech republic, eventually to Sevilla's local chauvinist and self contradictory catholicism where people are ardent socialists but still will just as fervently support the annual processions of the Virgin. The book is at its strongest when focussing on observing local culture, 'ordinary' people, getting involved in discussion with people. The various passages on papal visits tend to become slightly boring after a while. Some passages can be frightening and distressing, when catholicism and nationalism go so closely hand in hand (Croatia).
I was surprised that the author desperately tries to convince the reader that there is a problem with the fact that there are next to no catholics among the younger Scottish generation of writers. However, all his Scottish interview partners tell him, that they had never thought about it before and not a single one of them (not even the catholic) thought there was a problem. Toibin's obsession with possible discrimination seems strange and sectarian - about as absurdly out of place as if he had discovered that there were no left handed among Scotland's younger writers, and that the only explanation was discrimination...
There is a passage in the book which seems entirely out of place. This is the confession about the author's experience in a psychotherapeutic seminar. It looks as if writing it down and publishing it - no matter in what context - had been part of the therapy rather than he result of literary judgment.
Take away these small weak points and you'll read an entertaining and well observed book.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful
Format:Paperback
Excellent book by Colm Toibin. Can identify with many of his views. Fascinating chapters dealing with his visits to Croatia, Slovenia and Slovakia. In particular the various dialogs in Slovakia cast an interesting light on the emergence of Vaclav Havel and the subsequent split of Czech Republic and Slovakia. To be reading of his trip to Westport and the Croagh Patrick pilgrimage at a time of mass emigration from Ireland seems particularly relevant in today's (2010) circumstances. Also deals with Irish people's insecurities in dealing with English people. Very positively disposed to his Spanish experiences - and has clearly been influenced by his Hemingway reading in his youth.
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5 reviews
10 of 11 people found the following review helpful
A good read, and thought-provoking too
4 Jan 1999
Format:Paperback
This is a great book to read while traveling (it just got me through a trip home on a weekend when winter storms had disrupted airline schedules throughout the entire U.S.!). The chapters are short and fairly self-contained, but each is well-written and engrossing. There's a lot of variety -- from fairly straightforward travelogues such as the accounts of the author's visits to Rome, to highly personal essays on his family and his belated coming to grips with his father's early death. And he's the only ex-Catholic author I've read who's accurately described that odd, characteristic combination of lack of belief in the Church's tenets with lingering reverence for all things Catholic: I'm a 'collapsed Catholic' myself, and I think he got it down exactly right. (Nostalgia for one's childhood is part of it, but it's certainly not ALL of it!) His discussions of Catholicism and the English are telling, and he makes some points about the Irish Catholic treatment of Protestants that most of us, raised as we are with a black-and-white (or, in this instance, orange-and-green!) view of the issue, have never considered. There's a lot here to think about as well as be entertained by, and I recommend the book without reservation.
11 of 15 people found the following review helpful
Uninsightful and Mocking of Spirituality
25 July 2004
Format:Paperback
I wonder what possessed the author to bother at all with this subject? The writer scorns believers and practices at every shrine he visits - never attempting to understand the significance of the spirituality at each distinctive site. For him, its all the same, whether Spain or France or Poland. Each time the faintest hint of an insightful question, a yearn to probe deeper starts to appear, he dismisses it and announces that he is off to a pub for yet more beer. We must witness him downing caseloads of suds in this short book. Maybe this is the real problem here. Regretfully, he fits the Irish stereotype with his booze a little too much. For him, the answer to every question is yet more booze.
I was hoping to learn whether he found differences among believers or types of spirituality among the countries and peoples he visited. He labels himself as an outsider and detached, and rudely mocks superficial details at each sacred site. He never gets beyond the surface in noticing details or in understanding what drives people to perform these pilgrimages, what significance the site holds in a culture or political situation, what meaning do the individuals find or hope to find at each place. Also, there is no examination of the communal aspect of the pilgrimages occurring en masse, with many thousands of people engaged in these practices at the same time.
Do not be fooled. I am a left leaning liberal, and thought that this book would contain at least a bit a substance. In the end, I felt ripped off as a consumer for its lack of serious examination or discussion of the subject. I can imagine those prone to more religiosity being seriously offended by this tome.
The writing itself is trite, the commentary sophmoric. Author, get thee to an AA meeting, then take up your pen !!!!!
I was hoping to learn whether he found differences among believers or types of spirituality among the countries and peoples he visited. He labels himself as an outsider and detached, and rudely mocks superficial details at each sacred site. He never gets beyond the surface in noticing details or in understanding what drives people to perform these pilgrimages, what significance the site holds in a culture or political situation, what meaning do the individuals find or hope to find at each place. Also, there is no examination of the communal aspect of the pilgrimages occurring en masse, with many thousands of people engaged in these practices at the same time.
Do not be fooled. I am a left leaning liberal, and thought that this book would contain at least a bit a substance. In the end, I felt ripped off as a consumer for its lack of serious examination or discussion of the subject. I can imagine those prone to more religiosity being seriously offended by this tome.
The writing itself is trite, the commentary sophmoric. Author, get thee to an AA meeting, then take up your pen !!!!!
3 of 4 people found the following review helpful
Fascinating
19 Mar 1999
Format:Paperback
This was an amazing book. Full of interesting facts and details. It made me want to visit...well nearly all of the places described by the author. If you are interested in Catholicism or European culture and politics, I would strongly urge you to read this book.
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