cover image Holy Mother: Gabrielle Donnelly

Holy Mother: Gabrielle Donnelly

Gabrielle Donnelly. Atlantic Monthly Press, $7.95 (252pp) ISBN 978-0-87113-166-9

Every Friday night seven London Catholics get together with Father Bob to celebrate Mass and discuss their religion. But mostly they complain about how difficult it is to be Catholic in a Protestant country that equates different with foreign and dangerous. After a lot of jabs at the ""bog'' Irish, the group breaks up. They go home or to a pub and drink, complain more and bemoan the fact that they are not old-line patrician Catholics (i.e., Catholic since Henry VIII's time). There is much of interest about Catholic guilt and the grasp of the Mother Church, but even the most devout readers are likely to lose interest in these interchangeable characters and Donnelly's reiteration of the same points. Particularly jarring is the book's tone, which combines a look at theology with the breezy patter of a pulp novel. (October)