Irish Jesuit Province
They Are People: Modern Short Stories of Nuns, Monks and PriestsReview by: A. de B.The Irish Monthly, Vol. 72, No. 848 (Feb., 1944), p. 88Published by: Irish Jesuit ProvinceStable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/20515228 .
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88 THE IRISH MONTHLY
the catechism should be read and studied by all catechists. His final
chapter, " The True, the Beautiful, the Good ", is one that I would like to quote in full, for in it is painted the picture of the greatest of all
schools, the school with the most perfect teacher, Our Lady, and the most
perfect pupil, her Divine Son. N. P. LINEHAN.
They Are People: Modern Short Stories of Nuns, Monks and Priests. London: Sheed and Ward. 10/6.
They Ate People is an extraordinary book, in which twenty-six well known American, Irish and British authors are laid under tribute for tales of the religious life. One is prejudiced at the start by the editor's intro duction. In this, a novel by an Irishwoman, which our own censorship bans, is described as " the best book ever written, about the convent ". How could a Catholic critic describe such writing in such terms?
The tale;, however, are in a totally different spirit from this unfortunate introduction. They are lively, wholesome and absorbing. Layman or cleric, nun or working girl, all will delight in these pages, laughing or
weeping. It is a good thing to bring together writers of many schools, in a Catholic synthesis. A few violent phrases could have been sub-edited with advantage.
Frank O'Connor's tale is one of the best in the book. Let it be read only by people with a Catholic sense of humour. It describes a wee fellow going to Confession, and telling the priest that he is planning to murder his granny-a course from which his reverence dissuades him, with the warning that much as granny may have vexed him, such measures are inadvisable. The reader is set laughing wildly, and then he is touched, as the compassion of the Church for all the follies of the children of men comes home. Here we have what none save Catholics have, the super natural even in the simplest drolleries of life: an exquisite tale.
A. DE B.
Tanigled Threads. By Annie M. P. Smithson. Dublin: The Talbot Press, Ltd. 7/6.
If Miss Smithson's books up to now have had a fault, it has been the diffuseness and complicatedness of their plots. It is a pleasure, therefore, to be able to record an immense improvement (in spite of the implications of the title) in her latest novel, which contains one direct and straight forward story. Tle unifying factor is that the tale is told (and well told)
mainly as it appeared to the eyes of a stout-hearted, ageing nurse, a close observer of it all.
Indeed at the outset the book bore all the signs of becomino a first-class
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