Snow, a Novel by John Banville (Faber &Faber,£14.99/€17.50) Derek Hand Abandoning the nom de plume of Benjamin Black – the name under which appeared a highly successful series of crime novels – John Banville has finally embraced as his own the thriller genre with this murder mystery Snow. The creation of this mask and the sleight of hand it entailed,…

The Gentle Saint: A pilgrimage to Oxford, Dublin and Rome in the Footprints of Saint John Henry Newman by Patricia O’Leary (Gracewing, £12.99) To many readers Patricia O’Leary will be a familiar name, as she contributed a column to this newspaper for some 14 years. By metier a Cork-based journalist, she also studied catechetics and scripture at…

The Art of Spiritual Direction: a guide to Ignatian practice by Jos Moons SJ, with a foreword by Paul Nicholson SJ (Messenger Publications, €19.99/£18.99) Most of us recognise in areas of our life and leisure that training is important, and that practice is needed to keep in trim. Yet when it comes to matters of the…

Let us Dream: The Path to a Better Future by Pope Francis with Austen Ivereigh (Simon & Schuster (£10.99) This new book by Pope Francis is a very striking one. It contains, which is unusual in Papal works, pages of autobiography of the three periods of his own personal moments of isolation, moments akin to…

Inspiration for all Seasons: Celtic Wisdom for Today by John Scally (Black & White Publishing, Edinburgh, £14.99) Coming to hand just at the end of one year and the beginning of another, with many changes of all kinds in the offing here in Ireland, and around the world, this book was a delightful surprise. Here,…

How to be Our Best Self in Times of Crisis by Stuart Breen and Tom Gunning (Veritas, €7.99) As human beings we seemed made to thrive at times in moments of danger. Yet the present pandemic, being what it is, created great and unexpected troubles: physical, mental and spiritual. This little book by two writers…

Deeds Not Words: The Survival of the Fitzmaurices Lords of Kerry 1550 to 1603 by Martin Moore (Gabha Beag publications,€20.00) This splendid study examines the political and military roles of the Fitzmaurices, Lords of Kerry and Barons of Lixnaw, in the Tudor Years of 1550 to 1603. It shows their involvement in local, national and…

Readers may forgive me at this season of peace and goodwill, having already written about my most enjoyed book of last year (The Irish Catholic December 24, 2020), for concluding here my thoughts about 2020 with something I wrote during this Covid-19 year, which – I now discover – seems curiously ad rem: A Poem for 2021 Bunting…

For centuries Jerusalem and the Holy Land was a place of great mystique, the hope of pious pilgrims as the object of a once in a lifetime visit. But over the course of the long nineteenth century this began to change: new techniques of image making and reproduction began to alter the ideas that people…

Some of our regular reviewers select the book or books they most enjoyed or were impressed by over the course of the last year… TJ Morrissey SJ The most interesting book of the year for me was Paul: A Biography, by Tom Wright (SPCK Publishing, £19.99). The author is recognised as one of St Paul’s…