The Cape Ann by Faith Sullivan

The Cape Ann
by Faith Sullivan
Penguin, 1989
ISBN: 978-0140119794

 

The Cape Ann begins as an innocent coming of age story about a young girl, Lark Ann Erhardt, preparing to make her First Holy Communion and planning with her mother, Arlene, to build a house based on floor plans called The Cape Ann.  The story is set during the Great Depression, and the family has been living in makeshift quarters in the train depot since Lark was a baby.  Lark is still sleeping in her crib in her parents’ room.  Their plans are complicated by Lark’s father’s gambling the savings away as well as her aunt’s money and love problems.  Along the way towards their dream, Lark and Arlene interact with their community of Harvester, Minnesota, and Lark learns much about humans and human nature, especially compassion and the lack of it.

The Cape Ann uses the Catholic culture of the Depression years as the background for the tale.  Part of the humor in the book comes from Lark’s misunderstandings about theology.  For the most part that is the role Catholicism takes in the book.  However, complicating Lark’s Catholicism is the fact that Lark’s mother is a convert, so she is a device for analyzing the outsider living within a community - half-in, half-out.

Most of the characters know little more about Catholic theology than Lark and also suffer from misunderstandings, from either ignorance or expedience.  They also have a pre-Vatican II view of many theological issues - such as whether a suicide can be buried from the church and on consecrated ground.  Catholics with an understanding of our own history can see these discrepancies, but I always wonder about how non-Catholics or uneducated Catholics read literary portrayals of these ideas.  Do they know what theological issues have changed?  Do they know that Catholics often don’t understand their own faith?  But that’s not the fault of the book.  And probably not it’s responsibility either.  A careful and educated reader will see through the flaws of the characters to find a study of strong women struggling to grow within the confines of their place and time.

I do think it would be fun if some author wrote of growing up as a Catholic in my childhood - what we like to call “the felt on burlap” era.  Changes from Vatican II were just beginning to settle in - most of the fighting and bitterness were over.  It was an odd time - a time of somewhat loose theology and odd liturgical proceedings.  Most of the music was bad and most of the churches were ugly.  Vestments were dominated by butterflies and rainbows.  But it was certainly a time of great enthusiasm and joy and involvement.  As an early teen I was conflicted by my annoyance at the tackiness and my appreciation of the relevancy to my contemporary way of life.  I was conflicted by an enthusiasm for belting out “And They’ll Know We are Christians by Our Love” at the top of my lungs and a longing for the quiet beauty of “Panis Angelicus.”  It’s a great era for a coming of age tale.  I challenge someone to write it. 

Jon Hassler

Even though I’ve already suggested one book by Jon Hassler (Dear James), since he has recently passed away, I would like to honor him with another entry.  All of Hassler’s works are eminently worth reading, but three of my personal favorites are The Dean’s List, Simon’s Night, and North of Hope.

The Dean’s List is the first Hassler novel I read.  It is an immensely funny depiction of academic life from the point of view of a weary administrator (who’d rather be a faculty member).  Edwards lives with his mother whose death he must soon face; he frequently runs into his ex-wife with whom he still has a friendly and loving relationship.  He occasionally runs into the friends of his teaching days (whose adventures are recounted in Hassler’s earlier novel Rookery Blues).  But something is missing from his life, something that’s been missing since his father was struck by lightening when Leland was fourteen.  He’s the dean of a mediocre university with a more than mediocre president.  His mother, a local radio personality, outshines him and controls him.  Then arrives on campus the noted poet Richard Falcon (a sort of Robert Frost-ish kind of poet)  whom Leland is supposed to keep track of.  Chaos, hilarity and pathos ensue.  And in the process his life changes.

Simon’s Night begins at what Simon Shea assumes is the end of his life.  He’s eighty now and having difficulty living by himself.   He has lived alone since his wife abandoned him years ago.  Simon’s commits himself into the Norman Home for the Elderly, a place filled with the most amusing old people ever described by a warm and loving author.  These are not caricatures or stereotypes of crazy old people - although they are to some extent crazy.  They are very much real people with faults, annoying habits, and deep, sympathetic souls.  Much of Simon’s story is his remembrances, and these flashbacks contain one of the most beautiful descriptions of making a choice between, not really good and evil, but between a good and The Good ever written.  Simon is ultimately faced with another choice in this novel - a choice between wasting his life or beginning it anew.

North of Hope is perhaps Hassler’s darkest novel, and it is also perhaps his masterpiece.  There are still amusing characters, however, such as the old parish priest who feels compelled to spend most of his day praying for all the people he once said he would pray for and all the souls of the dead he has ever buried through the years.  He questions at what point a person can stop praying for another, but since he has no answer, he continues in his duty though it leaves him little time for anything else.  Father Healy, the assistant pastor, originally chose the priesthood because it was his mother’s dying wish when he was eleven.  When this familial legend comes into question, his whole vocation comes into question.  He is the one in this novel faced with the choice - the choice between love and Love.  He must choose between a vocation that has recently left him empty and weary and a woman whom he has loved since a teenager and who now  desperately needs him. 

We have lost a great storyteller in the passing of Jon Hassler, one who so eloquently and sympathetically delineated our choices between good and the greater good.  Choosing between good and evil isn’t all that hard, but choosing between two loves can be.

Eternal rest grant unto him, O Lord. 
And may perpetual light shine upon him.

Requiescat in Pacem.

The Poems of Alice Meynell

The Poems of Alice Meynell
Scribner’s, 1925

April is National Poetry Month, so even though Alice Christina Meynell did not write fiction, I’m going to recommend her Catholic writings anyway.  The first time I ran across Meynell, I was in a gift shop of the Metropolitan Museum of Art.  I discovered a delightful little book of love poems illustrated with paintings from the museum.  I didn’t buy the book because it was too expensive, but I quickly memorized Meynell’s name and the first lines of her two poems in the collection and found them the next day using Granger’s Index of Poetry.  They became two of my favorite poems.  I give them to you here:

 

Renouncement

  

I must not think of thee; and, tired yet strong,

I shun the love that lurks in all delight–

The love of thee–and in the blue heaven’s height,

And in the dearest passage of a song.

Oh, just beyond the sweetest thoughts that throng

This breast, the thought of thee waits hidden yet bright;

But it must never, never come in sight;

I must stop short of thee the whole day long.

But when sleep comes to close each difficult day,

When night gives pause to the long watch I keep,

And all my bonds I needs must loose apart,

Must doff my will as raiment laid away,–

With the first dream that comes with the first sleep

I run, I run, I am gather’d to thy heart.

 

After Parting

 

Farewell has long been said; I have forgone thee;

I never name thee even.

But how shall I learn virtues and yet shun thee?

For thou art so near Heaven

That Heavenward meditations pause upon thee.

 

Thou dost beset the path to every shrine;

My trembling thoughts discern

Thy goodness in the good for which I pine;

And, if I turn from but one sin, I turn

Unto a smile of thine.

 

How shall I thrust thee apart

Since all my growth tends to thee night and day–

To thee faith, hope, and art?

Swift are the currents setting all one way;

They draw my life, my life, out of my heart.

 

Meynell converted to Catholicism in 1868, and there is a romantic story that she fell in love with the priest under whom she received her instruction and that these poems are addressed to him.  We do like our poets and their poems to have such tender stories attached to them.  How delightfully melancholy to be torn by the paradox of a love which makes you a virtuous person (as true love should) but a love that you cannot as a virtuous person have.  Most of Meynell’s poetry is Catholic in subject matter and “closely examines the human role in constructing and celebrating the Catholic faith, and it repeatedly explores the relationship of faith and art.”*  Meynell married her husband Wilfred Meynell in 1877 and together they edited and wrote for the Catholic publications The Weekly Register and The Tablet.  Meynell also contributed essays to The Spectator, The Saturday Review and The National Observer.  Her poetical output was actually rather small and during her life she was admired as much as an essayist as a poet.  She counted among her close friends the other members of the Catholic Literary Revival of the 1890’s including G.K. Chesterton, Francis Thompson, and Hilaire Belloc among others. 

 

Doherty Library has two collections of Meynell’s poetry and one collection of her essays.  I haven’t read her essays yet, but intend to do so this weekend.    

 

 

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* Gray, F. Elizabeth.  “Alice Meynell.”  The Encyclopedia of Catholic Literature.  Ed. Mary R. Reichardt. ( Westport, CT: Greenwood, 2004), 462.

 

“First Confession” by Frank O’Connor

“First Confession”
by Frank O’Connor

Sometimes you go through periods when you just can’t find anything to read.  You’re stressed; you’re busy; you’re a little overwhelmed.  When you find the time to sit down and relax with a good book, you can’t choose one.  You pick up one book, read a few pages, put it down; you pick up another, flip through, put it down.  You toss aside books you’ve been waiting months to read and old favorites you’ve read dozens of times.  Nothing fits your mood or grabs your scattered attention.  You can’t make a commitment.  You have become a Commitment Phobe in the realm of reading.  (Note that I have not done an entry in awhile so I know of what I speak.)  That’s when I turn to short stories.  Of course when one mentions “Catholic” and “short stories” in the same sentence, readers immediately think of Flannery O’Connor, and she is well worth reading (and will merit an entry here someday), but because it’s March, I will recommend at this time Frank (no relation to Flannery) O’Connor’s  “First Confession.”  Not only is O’Connor an Irish writer which makes St. Patrick’s Day an excellent time for reading him, but now is also the season of First Confessions and First Communions.  Catholic aunts, uncles, cousins, godparents, etc. will be attending numerous First Communions in the coming weeks following Easter (I myself am already engaged for two) and memories of one’s own first sacraments – especially in cradle Catholics – will be very near the surface of the mind and heart.

“First Confession” is an extremely humorous, laugh-out-loud-in-public-even-if-you-embarrass-yourself, story.  The narrator Jackie doesn’t see the situation of having to make his first confession as humorous at all.  In fact he’s desperately worried about burning in hell in the afterlife and the misery his grandmother causes in his present, corporeal life.  As he sees it there is no way possible he can refrain from sinning, no way he can admit the heinous nature of his sins and therefore no way he can escape eternal damnation.  He can’t even operate a confessional correctly.  But it’s the adult mind looking back on the absurdities of the situation of a six year old and the seriousness and literalness with which he approaches everything that brings out the humor.  Frank McCourt’s recounting of his First Confession and First Communion in his memoir Angela’s Ashes is told in a similar fashion although O’Connor’s short story is much less grim.  (McCourt’s grandmother sends him back to the confessional three times in the same day because she disagrees with Father’s assessment of young Frank’s state of grace.)

“First Confession” is available in numerous collections and anthologies including Collected Stories by Frank O’Connor at Doherty.

FYI – The UST Catholic Fiction Reading Group will read O’Connor’s short story at their organizational meeting on Sunday March 16^th at 6pm in Doherty Library.  All members of the UST community are invited to attend.  See our Facebook page for more details. 

Encyclopedia of Catholic Literature edited by Mary R. Reichardt

Encyclopedia of Catholic Literature

edited by Mary R. Reichardt

Greenwood Press, 2004

ISBN 0-313-32289-9 (set)

Most reference books on Catholic fiction were written before or during the heyday of Catholic fiction and literary criticism in the 50’s and early 60’s when Catholic culture had a tendency to be more parochial in nature and reference books more didactic.  A recent edition to this body of work, however, is the very thorough and very useful Encyclopedia of Catholic Literature.  This encyclopedia covers all genres of Catholic literature from 397AD with Augustine’s Confessions through 1997, so it does include non-fiction works.  The earliest novel discussed in John Henry Newman’s Loss and Gain, The Story of a Convert published in 1848.  The second oldest novel is Orestes Brownson’s The Spirit Rapper published in 1854.  Most of the works included in the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries, however, are either fiction or poetry, and the majority of the works included overall are in these categories.  The encyclopedia is two volumes and lists 73 authors in alphabetical order.  (Two authors – John Henry Newman and Evelyn Waugh are granted two articles a piece).  Since the articles are so rich, it’s a little frustrating that the encyclopedia includes so few authors, but what it lacks in breadth it makes up for in depth.  Each entry begins with a biography of the author (including process of conversion is applicable) followed by a plot summary and critical discussion of one major work.  These discussions include references to the spiritual elements and the Catholic content within the work so look at the works as examples of specifically Catholic literature.  They are, therefore, more than a general critical overview.  Each article is written by an expert on that particular author and concludes with a short bibliography of further reading.  The entire encyclopedia concludes with short biographies of the contributors and a lengthier list of additional resources.    The encyclopedia does make a concerted effort, according to its introduction, to include many women writers and writers of “diverse ethnic and racial backgrounds.”  It is interesting to note that the latest work discussed is Denise Levertov’s The Stream and the Sapphire published in 1997.  Admittedly the encyclopedia was published in 2004 and creating such a reference book is a lengthy process, but  have no works of considerable Catholic Fiction been published in the last ten years?  The Encyclopedia of Catholic Literature is available at Doherty Library.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie by Muriel Spark

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie
by Muriel Spark
J.P. Lippincott, 1962

A visitor to Sister Helena of the Transfiguration, formerly Sandy Stranger and now a cloistered nun renowned for the publication of her work in psychology “The Transfiguration of the Commonplace,” asks her “What were the main influences of your school days, Sister Helena?  Were they literary or political or personal?  Was it Calvinism?”  Her response?  “There was a Miss Jean Brodie in her prime.”

Miss Jean Brodie often tells her students “give me a girl at an impressionable age and she is mine for life.”  This may explain why Sister Helena, even years after Miss Brodie’s death, still attributes all of who she is to that one influential teacher.

Most people could probably name a Miss Jean Brodie from their past.  The teacher that expanded their minds and frightened them out of their wits.  The teacher who gave them the greatest gifts of imagination, creativity, independence, individualism, intellectual rigor, and who also tried to crush these very qualities out of them.  The teacher one never forgets and whom one never looks back on sentimentally or without a confusion of emotions. 

Miss Brodie is a bundle of paradoxes.  She is a free spirit, a progressive educator, an artistic, sensitive woman who is fascinated by the fascism of  Mussolini and Hitler, mainly because of its ability to organize and regulate.  Miss Brodie is able to cast off all societal conventions because she is in her prime, but she creates a set of incomprehensible rules for her girls such as one does not leave a window open more than six inches, for six inches is plenty and more is vulgar. 

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie takes place in the 1930’s in Edinburgh, Scotland but was published in 1962. The setting of Calvinist Edinburgh mirrors the dark, dingy, depressing atmosphere of post-war England.  Although the moral conventions of the thirty’s are present in the plot, the open attitude toward sex of the sixty’s is prominent in the narration.  That is not to say that the book advocates the sexual freedoms of the last half of the last century, although the authorial voice does not condemn them.  But like most ideas addressed in the novel, sexual indiscretion is neither all good nor all bad.  Good comes out of immoral acts, even the most immoral intentions.  So does evil.  Perhaps only fascism is judged as completely evil, but those who are attracted to fascism are not. 

Sandy, now Sister Helena, says that “the influences of one’s teens are very important” even if “they provide something to react against.”  Sandy was not raised Catholic, nor was she raised Calvinist, nor with any particular religious convictions at all.  Miss Brodie exposed her young students to all kinds of spiritual views but disdained Catholicism for Catholics, she said, cannot and do not think for themselves.  Yet, Sandy’s acceptance of Catholicism is a conscious and deliberate act, more so than Miss Brodie’s rejection of it.  And it continues a conscious and deliberate decision, for although Sandy finds her true self in Catholicism, and the ability to discipline her insights about people into an influential book on morality and psychology,  she does not find peace and comfort, nor is she freed from the influences of Miss Brodie.[1]   

The narrator of Jean Brodie seems to be an omniscient one, yet at the same time the story is filtered through the eyes of Sandy, the student most like Miss Brodie, the student most misunderstood by Miss Brodie, the student who, as Miss Brodie predicted several times, did indeed go too far one day.  The narrative is not straightforward either but jumbled flashbacks and repetitive phrases piece the story and the characters together.  The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is a short book and easy to read and follow, but it is not a comfortable book.  It’s as confusing and disturbing as memories of that teacher – you know the one – your Miss Jean Brodie.

The Prime of Miss Jean Brodie is available at Doherty Library.

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[1]Benilde Montgomery, “Spark and Newman: Jean Brodie Reconsidered,” in Twentieth Century Literature, Vol. 43, Spring 1997, pp. 94-106. Reprinted in Novels for Students, Vol. 22.

The Last Hurrah by Edwin O’Connor

The Last Hurrah

by Edwin O’Connor

Little, Brown and Company, 1956

 

Frank Skeffington is running for mayor again, probably for the last time since he’s even now 72.  He has presided over this major eastern seaboard city (never named in the book) for much of his adult life and even spent two terms as governor of the state.  Over the years he has built up a number of loyal friends, colleagues and slavish followers.  And, as most successful politicians do, he’s created a number of enemies as well.  But Skeffington’s greatest enemy is the passage of time.  The last hurrah of the title is this election, and in fact O’Connor coined this common phrase that refers to one’s last moment of glory before an ultimate demise. 

Skeffington rose to power when politics was the only way out of the slums for an Irish immigrant.  He’s taken good care of his people and himself as well.  He was the politician who was out in the wards, handing out goodies (jobs, dentures, city construction projects) to people while using public funds.  It was the period of ward politics, but ward politics is on its way out.  Skeffington himself says that in this election he’s running the last campaign of its kind.  He walks among the people giving speeches on street corners and in junior highs.  He knows his people, knows what they want, what they need and the difference.  But ward politics are dirty and hard-scrabble, and Skeffington has been a willing part of every brawl.  Even on the morning of the announcement of his bid for re-election, Skeffington announces the destruction of one of his longtime campaigners to his inner circle.

 

The story shows the passing of an era that had serious problems.  It was a time of fervent prejudices.  In fact, not so very unlike today, the first thing the Skeffington team does is trot out the leaders of the various ethnic groups in the city to show their united support for the mayor.  But the only thing the members of these groups hold in common is that they all have needs that Skeffington and his like have taken care of for years.  Skeffington did loyally take care of his people, but they were his people, and he chose those he cared for by which way they voted.  And Skeffington recognizes that it is the very success of this kind of politics that caused it’s destruction for he says of his politicians and sycophants that “their total dependence on favor from above had not left them with any great courage.”   Definitely many of the dated behaviors of O’Connor’s time are reflected in this book, particularly racial and ethnic prejudice.  There is an unfortunate, if realistic, use of racial epithets that makes the modern reader twinge. 

 

Even so, something is always lost as one era surpasses another.  One of Skeffington’s greatest enemies says “he sometimes wondered, when he talked to his sons, whether they who seemed to have overcome so many of the old passionate prejudices of their ancestors had not also managed to overcome some of their old passionate virtues?  In these neutral, tolerant times, did anyone really feel deeply about anything?. . . .  He contrasted this mild, automatic disgust with the violent shouts and empurpled faces that the name of Skeffington could occasion among his own contemporaries; he concluded that, even here, they swam in the new emotional shallows.  In a sense, of course, it was a good thing; but still, he thought, but still . . .”  In this new era of tolerance, there is a tolerance even of mediocrity.  It’s an era, the beginning of television, when a good looking, polite young man with a picturesque family can win an election even if he’s nothing more than second-rate.  O’Connor won the Golden Book Award from Catholic Writer’s Guild in 1957, and Joseph Bottom, in his review of a recent biography of Edwin O’Connor in First Things ,  speculates that his book was not only a last hurrah for ward politics but also for Catholic culture in the United States. 

 While not a political thriller by any means (the handwriting is on the wall with the title), The Last Hurrah is still a classic political novel and often has as much to say about our own reaction to politics as Skeffington’s constituency, for as he says “You don’t have to be interested in politics to be interested in the way people tick.  And they’re apt to tick a little bit differently in an election; something seems to happen to the average member of the body politic when he’s being persuaded to cast his vote for what I modestly refer to as the indispensable man.” All in all, the story is a great read for, as Skeffington tells his nephew, “a big political campaign, if it’s run right, is one of the greatest shows on earth.”  And this last hurrah of a huge personality, a corrupt yet compassionate man, a cultured yet ruthless politician, is indeed great entertainment.  The Last Hurrah is available at Doherty Library.    

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A Morbid Taste For Bones by Ellis Peters

A Morbid Taste for Bones: The First Chronicle of Brother Cadfael
by Ellis Peters
Mysterious Press, 1994
ISBN: 978-0446400152

A great way to handle the stress of the end of the semester is with a nice, short, light, comforting book like one of the Brother Cadfael series by Ellis Peters (pseudonym for Edith Pargeter).  Relaxing with some light reading is a great way to cleanse the mind without deadening it, such as zoning out in front the TV tends to do.  It’s like eating sherbet to cleanse the palette between courses in a gourmet meal.  To prepare for my exams in my undergraduate days, I would insert reading Sherlock Holmes short stories between studying and taking the tests. 

 

Brother Cadfael is in many ways like Sherlock Holmes.  He uses forensics coupled with a little psychology to solve crimes.  But his forensics is based on clear observation of the natural world around him for during his medieval era there was more suspicion than science when dealing with murder.  As the herbalist of the Abbey of St. Peter and St. Paul in Shrewsbury, Brother Cadfael has a vast knowledge of area flora and fauna as well as rare plants and medicinal practices he brought back from the East.  As a former soldier in the Crusades who entered the monastery when he was forty, he also has a vast knowledge of human nature and its passions.

 

The Brother Cadfael stories are set during the civil war in England between King Stephen and Empress Maud in the twelfth century.  The Normans only relatively recently occupied England in 1066, and there are a lot of interesting cultural observations of the mixing of the Normans, the Saxons and the Welsh.  Cadfael himself is Welsh but can also speak in English (and one presumes in French since he has many conversations with the Norman nobility).  Peters not only develops the historical ambience of the period, she also re-creates the world of a medieval monastery, and there is much reference to the daily life of the monks including singing the daily Office, offering hospitality to strangers, confessing before the abbot, etc.  She also addresses the political relationship between the monastery and the town which mirrors the relationship between the larger church and the secular government. 

 

Despite these historical and cultural details, Brother Cadfael himself has a modern sensibility.  Cadfael was a soldier of the Crusades, and he does not regret it, but much emphasis in the stories are on the waste and repetitiveness of war, particularly civil war.  Cadfael also takes a mild view of sexual indiscretions, and although he calls those he counsels to a stricter form of living, it is for their psychological and spiritual health that he is concerned rather than their potential destination in the afterlife. 

 

Cadfael also takes a modern, somewhat skeptical, view of the accouterments of Catholic spirituality.  In the first book of the series, A Morbid Taste for Bones, Cadfael joins in a pilgrimage to Wales to gather the relics of one Saint Winifred who was martyred there.  Cadfael is asked on the journey because he speaks Welsh, which the Norman Prior Robert does not, not because he has any interest in bones of a young girl.  Prior Robert wants the relics because having them at Shrewsbury Abbey will turn it into a pilgrimage destination with all the fame and money that would entail.  The final major member of the journey is Brother Columbanus, a delicate young monk susceptible to visions and catatonic fits.  The members of the Welsh village do not want to give up their beloved Saint Winifred, but these English monks cannot understand their reluctance.  Soon the leading figure of the opposition to monks winds up dead.  Brother Cadfael eventually brings peace to all concerned, and Saint Winifred becomes his life long patroness even though he cares not at all where her physical bones may actually lie.  To Cadfael, she is always with him, and he returns in prayer for her help many times throughout the series. 

 

Although the twenty one Cadfael books are developed chronologically, there is no need to read them in any particular order.  Any necessary details from previous stories are seamlessly reintroduced when needed.  Cadfael paperbacks are short, small, easy to carry and available almost anywhere such as area public libraries and used bookstores.

 

The entry on Cadfael in Wikipedia lists the publication dates as well as the dates of action of the books. 

This site developed by devoted fan Steve C. gives a good deal of background to the books.

 

Kitty from the Start by Judy Delton

Kitty from the Start
Judy Delton
Houton Mifflin, 1987
ISBN: 978-0395428474

Should you be looking for a nice Christmas or First Communion gift for a young girl, Kitty from the Start by Judy Delton would be a good choice.  Kitty herself is in third-grade, but the book should appeal to readers from 3^rd-5^th.  Good second grade readers could enjoy the book as well.  Or maybe you yourself just want a break from reading Aquinas, Homer, or Freud.

 

Kitty is in third grade during the early 1940’s.  Although World War II is raging in Europe, Kitty is not very aware of it.  What she is aware of is moving from her well-known, well-loved school St. James’ to the new and unknown St. Anthony’s (where the church is actually in the school and where they make First Communion in Third Grade instead of Second!)  At St. Anthony’s Kitty does quickly make friends, just as her parents told her she would, but they are two such very different friends.  Mary Margaret is a perfect child, always neat, always has her homework done, always appropriately dressed, and always pointing out what others are doing wrong.  Mary Margaret goes to Mass everyday, and Kitty admires her and wants to be holy like her.  But she’s also attracted to the lifestyle of Eileen who likes to play “Confession” by turning her closet into a confessional and taking the role of a very old, very mean and very loud priest.  Kitty enjoys playing “Confession” but is sure Mary Margaret wouldn’t approve and is pretty sure it’s not holy to participate.

 

I related to Kitty a lot because, even though I grew up in the post-Vatican II 1970’s and not in Kitty’s pre-Vatican II 1940’s, we had a lot in common.  And I suspect a lot of kids who grew up Catholic do as well.  I too was attracted to the saintly life and adapted various bizarrely pious acts (I once tried to only wear blue to show my devotion to the Madonna but my school uniform was green and my mother refused to buy me all new clothes).  But I also enjoyed playing the titillating and somewhat gory game of “Martyrs.”

 

Kitty is told through the point of view of a nine year old girl which leads to the one difficulty with the book.  A geography lesson on Africa is presented in a patronizing manner and uses a racially insensitive name Bambo for a child in Africa that the American children are supposed to relate to.  While it is probably realistic that this lesson would have been presented to these children in the 1940’s in such a way, with only Kitty’s perceptions presented, there is no authorial voice indicating to today’s young readers that such an attitude is inappropriate.  An adult should discuss this issue with the child reader.

 

However, this instance is very brief and all in all, it’s a rather sweet book.  Kitty from the Start is actually the first in a series (although the last written) of novels about Kitty, Mary Margaret and Eileen.  The series eventually takes Kitty and her friends through high school.

 

Kitty from the Start is available at area public libraries.    

The Catholic Novel: An Annotated Bibliography by Albert J. Menendez

The Catholic Novel: An Annotated Bibliography
by Albert J. Menendez
Garland Publishing, 1988
ISBN: 0824085345

This bibliography is a treasure trove of obscure Catholic novels.  Many of these titles Menendez found scouring used bookstores, that haven of serendipity that is, alas, rapidly disappearing.  The introduction begins with a short history of the Catholic novel beginning in the nineteenth-century for Menendez designates the 1820’s as the beginnings of the genre.  He suggests that The Betrothed (182 by Allessandro Monzoni was the first Catholic novel in English, and that The Abbe Constantin (1882) by Ludovic Halevy was the first to become a best seller.  As with most compilations this sort, Menendez feels compelled to begin with how he defines Catholic fiction and therefore with what will be included in his list.  He states, “A Catholic novel is one which reflects the values, culture and conflicts of the Roman Catholic faith and its community.  This may seem slightly unecumenical, but it is necessary to establish some parameters to differentiate the Catholic novel from other kinds of religious fiction.”  Therefore, although Menendez includes works by non-Catholics, he does not include works by Catholics which are not about specifically Catholic subjects.  Thus, the bibliography does not include some great Catholic writers such as Flannery O’Connor since most of her short stories are grounded in the culture of the fundamentalist Protestant South.  On the other hand, he does include Nathaniel Hawthorne’s The Marble Faun though not many think of Hawthorne a Catholic author (even though his daughter converted to Catholicism and established a religious order).  Menendez also includes books he says are “primarily critical of Catholicism” though he omits “so-called ‘anti-Catholic’ fiction.”  What the selections do include is a wonderful array of subjects and subcategories such as the Catholic historical novel, the Vatican thriller, and the Catholic murder mystery.  You can also find books on growing up Catholic, Irish Catholicism, particular saints (e.g. Saint Maria Goretti) and much more.  Menendez lists 1703 novels, in alphabetical order by author, beginning in the 1820’s.  The bibliography was published in 1988, so it includes novels published through 1987.  He also gives information about 489 critical works on religious novels in general, general works on Catholic novels, and criticism about major authors.  He ends the bibliography with an idiosyncratic list of the “100 Greatest Catholic Novels.”  Finally, there is a subject index and a title index.  Most of the works have short annotations but some are more helpful than others.  One novel, for example, is described as “A valiant and witty priest shapes the spiritual destiny of a small Ohio town.”  Bibliographies like this are difficult to create, and none can contain everything you need, but for a good overview of the progress of the Catholic novel in America and for exposure to Catholic novels you’d never find anywhere else, this work is exceptionally useful.  Menendez’s bibliography is available in Doherty Library.