Recent Reads

In recent days my fiction reading has had added focuses. 

I read The Dry Wood by Carykk Houselander and One Poor Scruple by Josephine Wood after reading about an effort to make forgotten Catholic women writers better known. And I read Come Rack! Come Rope! by Father Robert Hugh Benson because I was asked to play a small part in a play version of the book.

Reading Houselander and Wood was inspired by an article in the September/October issue of the Saint Austin Review, "Celebrating Catholic Women Writers," a Joseph Pearce interview of Trevor Lipscombe. The interview was about a Catholic University Press series intended to republish novels written by Catholic women in the twentieth century. I subsequently ordered the two books, which were among the books discussed.

I enjoyed both books, but preferred Houselander's. I found the characters and the issues addressed in the story - the death of a holy priest and popular calls for his canonization, church politics, a sick child that had become a community focus, and so on - more interesting. Lipscombe said The Dry Wood was the "finest Catholic-themed novel" he'd read since Brideshead Revisited. High praise, but I can see why he thinks that.

Wood's book was not bad, but it was more of a Jane Austen type book with a focus on romance and marriage, but with a very Catholic overlay. Again, good book, just less interesting to me. Others might thoroughly enjoy it.

Of the three books, I enjoyed Father Benson's the most. I had been thinking of reading it anyway, but was prompted to do s immediately when I was contacted by the local Chesterton Academy's theater people. They are doing a play version of the novel, and they were looking for a couple of adults to play small parts in support of the students. I had directed plays with one of the theater people before, and a number of the students in the play are students I taught and directed at my former school. So I welcome the chance.

As for the book, given its historical setting - the persecution of Catholics under Bloody Bess - I was immediately drawn in. And I liked how he not only mixed in historical figures, but also how he handled the conflicts, the family divisions, and the choices people made.

I recommend all three books.

Pax et bonum