Six Degrees of Separation: April 2024

Six Degrees of Separation is hosted by Kate of https://booksaremyfavouriteandbest.com/

This time we start the chain with a travel guide of our choice, so I have chosen The Rough Guide to Ireland, which was last updated in 2021 (a new edition is to be published in 2025.)

It's probably 20 years since I was last in Ireland, and I know it has changed so much since then. The Catholic church was even at that time beginning to have its iron grip on the country loosened, and from what I can tell it now has far less sway, especially in the cities. Whether that is also the case in the more rural areas, I don't know.

I always loved visiting Ireland, particularly County Waterford, home of a very longstanding friend. Perhaps I will go again one day - the Rough Guide certainly provides plenty of incentives, and I like the way these guides have a 'literature' section in the back about writers, playwrights and poets, past and present (and Ireland certainly has an abundance of those.)

One of the reasons for the church's declining influence in Ireland is the number of terrible practices that have been uncovered concerning, in particular, institutions like the notorious Magdalene laundries, where unwed pregnant girls were sent to have their babies - who were then forcibly taken from them and often sold to wealthy childless couples.

Anyone who has seen Peter Mullan's deeply shocking film The Magdalene Sisters will know that the poor girls sent to these dreadful places were treated appallingly. The men who had had at least as much involvement in the creation of these babies (some of the girls had even been raped) were never castigated in any way. It was the girls who were 'sinners', and my goodness did many of those nuns punish them for that. 

Claire Keegan's moving novella, Small Things Like These, is about an ordinary coal and timber merchant, Bill Furlong, who lives in New Ross with his wife and five daughters. The church runs the best school in the town, and the elder Furlong daughters are already pupils. The couple naturally wants their younger daughters to follow suit - but their admission to the school is entirely in the hands of the religious order.

Bill regularly delivers fuel to the convent. One cold December day, while doing his usual delivery, he finds a young girl in the coal shed. She is freezing and distraught, asking for her baby. One of the nuns very soon hurries her back into the building, and seems to be looking after her, but Bill's suspicions are raised, and he wonders if this kindness is real or simply feigned to impress him. He gradually starts to realise that everyone in New Ross except him has always known that the convent is one of the laundries - but no one speaks out about it, or attempts to help the girls, because the church controls everything in the town. 

Bill soon finds himself in a very difficult situation; if he helps this girl (whom he sees again) his daughters will be very unlikely to get into the school. If he doesn't, how will he be able to live with himself? Keegan takes us back to Furlong's own childhood, which could have mirrored the very situation he now finds before him, but didn't because one good woman chose to stand against the world and do what she knew to be right.

Small Things Like These is, at its heart, an examination of moral choices, divided loyalties, conscience, and how we decide what is the right thing to do when nothing is straightforward and no choice will be without consequences. It is so horrifying, yet so sparely and gently told; it richly deserved its award of the 2022 Orwell Prize for Political Fiction, and its Booker shortlisting in the same year. 

The story is set in 1985 - less than forty years ago. I myself first visited the country in the early 80s, and, child of the London suburbs as I was, found myself fascinated by the way of life, and of the way in which the church dominated people's lives. I had absolutely no idea that the Magdalene laundries existed until I saw Mullan's film when it came out in 2002. Now I am appalled at my ignorance.

One of the themes of Small Things Like These is the measures to which a parent will go to help their child(ren). In Joanna Trollope's The Rector's Wife, Anna has always been the perfect wife to the rector, Peter, and devoted mother to their children. She fulfils the now outdated (at least in the churches I know of) idea of a vicar's wife, seeing to all the traditional parish duties, being nice to everyone, and making do on Peter's small income.

When Anna discovers that their daughter is being bullied at school, she is determined to move her to a private one. The only way she can do this is to earn some cash, so she gets a job in the local supermarket. However, this scandalous (!) deviation from people's expectations eventually leads to far more than the payment of school fees; Anna's eyes are opened to other possibilities in life, and as Peter becomes increasingly withdrawn and bitter about his lack of promotion, Anna begins to realise that she may wish to make other choices. 

The Rector's Wife was published over twenty years ago now, and may well read as rather dated, but it still addresses the issues that many women face to day, chief among them the conflicting demands of their relationships, their children, and their own need for fulfilment outwith home and family. These are all standard Trollope themes, and in her best books she is very good at laying them bare. 

Several unhappy clerics appear in Susan Howatch's Starbridge series. Inspired by the cathedral at Salisbury, where the author lives, these books aim to follow the history of the Church of England through the 20th century - but if that makes them sound dull they are very far from it, in fact to me they at times read more like a religious soap opera. There is a huge cast of bishops, archdeacons, monks (a friary is also involved), canons, church secretaries, beautiful young women, spiritual advisers and goodness knows who else, and as in all such institutions, there is endless bickering, gossip and rivalry. Start with Glittering Images. 

A rector who became a bishop before leaving the church altogether (or almost altogether) is the author of my next book, Leaving Alexandria. Richard Holloway rose from humble beginnings as the son of a textile worker in the Vale of Leven, trained as an Episcopalian priest, worked in various parishes around the world, and returned to Edinburgh as rector of Old St Paul's in Jeffrey Street, just off the Royal Mile. There he helped to set up youth clubs, night shelters, soup kitchens and many other much needed resources.

Along the way his doubts about his own vocation, and about the nature of faith itself, have been many, but he (somewhat reluctantly) became Bishop of Edinburgh. His concerns about the church's intransigence on many issues, especially the ordination of women, LGBT rights and same sex marriage, led in the end to him resigning his post and leaving the church.

In Leaving Alexandria; A Memoir of Faith and Doubt, he takes us from his relatively poor but very happy childhood through to 2012, by which time he was describing himself as 'post-religious.' Since then he has become a well known face at the Edinburgh Book Festival, the chair of many literary events, a broadcaster, a founder of The Big Orchestra, and the author of several other books. He still attends Old St Paul's, where he is an extremely popular member of the congregation. I have heard him speak on many occasions, and have always enjoyed his energetic, engaged and open minded approach.

A very different Alexandria is portrayed in Lawrence Durrell's Alexandria Quartet. Set in the Egyptian city largely before and during the Second World War, the books focus on the same set of characters and events from three different perspectives. I read the first book, Justine, (published in 1957) when I was a teenager, and I doubt I understood most of it, but I still remember Durrell's experimental style and ethereal use of language. I have the beautiful Faber copies still, and I think it's about time I attempted them again. 

I am a devoted fan of Barbara Pym, but I have to admit that I'm not that keen on one of her last novels, Quartet in Autumn, even though many people love it, and it was the only one of her books to be shortlisted for the Booker Prize. The story follows four older people, none of whom is married (one has been widowed) as they navigate the many challenges of retirement from their office jobs, coping with health problems, accommodation and financial concerns, isolation and aging in general. I can see that's it's a well written and thoughtful novel. I just find it too depressing to re-read, whilst I return to Pym's earlier, lighter, books, especially Some Tame Gazelle, A Glass of Blessings and Excellent Women, frequently and with joy.

It is perhaps ironic that, in the month when we started our chains with a guide book, only one of my subsequent links is based outwith the UK. Nevertheless, I have at least managed some sort of a chain this month!

In May our chains will start with Stephanie Bishop's The Anniversary.