My Book Reviews

Review of The Woman in White , Wilkie Collins, Penguin Classics, Introduction and Notes by Matthew Sweet (2003) Wilkie Collins (1824 – 1889) was an English novelist and playwright His unusual Christian name was after his godfather, a painter friend of his father’s called David Wilkie. His father was quite a successful and accomplished landscape painter. K nown mainly for the novel The Woman in White (1860), Wilkie Collins became a successful novelist. This was an early mystery novel and what was then called a sensation novel, which laid down the foundation or ground rules for the modern detective novel. It is also perhaps the earliest example of the police procedural genre . Moreover, it is a novel that combines aspects of Gothic horror with psychological realism . Also, Collins uses a “startlingly innovative” structure (Matthew Sweet, Introduction, p. xvi), namely, he dispenses with the usual authorial technique of “ omniscient narrator ” and allows the very characters enco...

Words and Mysticism Today, I would like to review an interesting book that weaves language and mysticism together.  In this case, the language in question is Irish, or Gaeilge , as it is also widely known.   Here, I will review Manchán Magan 's Thirty-Two Words for Field: Lost Words of the Irish Landscape .  (Gill Books, Dublin, 2020). All of us who read and write for personal edification and enjoyment often become completely enthralled by the magic of the music of the particular combination of words the authors compose for us.  We often call their style magical, lyrical, musical, sublime, majestic or awe-inspiring.  Not that a whole book is like that, but significant passages therein are expressed in such a fashion at vital junctures in the story.  The last two authors I reviewed in these pages, John Moriarty and John O'Donohue, had this authorial skill in abundance, and I presented the reader with examples of both.   John Henry Newman (1801 --...

Words mean everything to us.  Without them we could not exist individually or comunally, personally or culturally.  Furthermore, words are our primary means of communication.  Languages are replete with meaning, national identity, cultural identity and personal identity, and these modalities of our significance are expressed through their medium.  Two quotations on words that appeal to me are the following: (i)  “Words mean more than what is set down on paper. It takes the human voice to infuse them with deeper meaning.” ( Maya Angelou ) and (ii) “Words have magical power. They can either bring the greatest happiness or the deepest despair.” ( Sigmund Freud ). What, then, is the relation of these preliminary thoughts to my proposed review of the now modern classics of Celtic Spirituality , (i)  Anamchara: Spiritual Wisdom from the Celtic World ,   (Bantam: Transworld Publishers, 1997), (ii) Eternal Echoes: Exploring our Hunger to Belong ( ...