Review
Sean McMahon enjoys an atmospheric tale of 19th century Irish life.
- The Big Chapel
- Liberties
Church Militant
This reissue of Kilroy’s 1971 novel will garner more ‘astonished and grateful readers’ to use Brian Friel’s words from the foreword.
This reissue of Kilroy’s 1971 novel will garner more ‘astonished and grateful readers’ to use Brian Friel’s words from the foreword. Based upon an actual scandal in Callan, County Kilkenny that Francis MacManus rendered more sparingly in his novel The Greatest of These in 1943 it gives a marvellous picture of the complication of Irish Catholic life in the final decades of the 19th century. In spite of its sociological authenticity its account of clerical obstinacy and ruthlessness has an apposite modern reference. Indeed at times the author seems to weight his purpose to that end.
The story of the accursed family Scully, their determination to hold by what they see as right, the turbulent priest, Fr Lannigan, who takes on the Church at the highest level, the trial of strength as the ‘weak’ rattle the strong and faith clashes with law – all are told with the sense of high drama that characterises the author’s main oeuvre. Interwoven with the concomitant local piety and rage are the observations, almost astronomical in their remoteness, of the locals by Horace Percy Butler, the local eccentric ‘benevolent’ grandee, also characteristic of the time and place.
