May 19th6:30pm
Are you overwhelmed by the pressure to keep up with the continuous barrage of new book releases? Are you interested in reading beyond the margins of today’s contemporary literary discourse? Do you want to inject a bit of surprise and intrigue into your reading life? Our club is centered around books that have been largely forgotten, the reissued classics and rare finds that have slipped from the mainstream and are waiting to be discovered by a new set of readers.
This month we'll discuss John Broderick's erotic nightmare of Catholic longing, guilt, and desire and a banned classic of modern Irish literature, The Pilgrimage.
Wealthy and devout, Michael and Julia Glynn are the envy of their neighbors and the model Irish Catholic couple, bearing Michael's increasingly painful and crippling arthritis with stoicism. In hope of a miracle, their priest suggests a family pilgrimage to Lourdes. Yet these pious holiday plans are thrown into disarray when anonymous, obscene letters begin to arrive, full of terrible accusations.
Banned in Ireland on its first publication in 1961, Broderick's debut arrived "like an incendiary device" (Sunday Independent). The Pilgrimage anticipated the deep shifts that would soon turn the country's theocratic society upside down. It is a darkly comic, blasphemous, and sexually charged chamber drama laying bare the hypocrisies of a small Irish town "as watchful as the jungle," and teetering on the brink of catastrophe. In the words of Colm T ib n, in his foreword to this edition, The Pilgrimage "cleared a space in the jungle so that its wildness could be more easily seen."
Contact Genay, at bookclubs@mcnallyjackson.com with any questions.
Reserve your place with a $5 voucher, redeemable on the night of the book club meeting on any product in store.