Baywatch (15A) “I don’t mind being called a dumb blonde,” Dolly Parton likes to say, “because I’m not dumb – and I’m not a blonde.” Pamela Anderson has parlayed a similar trajectory in her career, playing into the sexist stereotypes that proliferate around her. One joke goes: “The longest anything stayed in Pam’s head was…
Valerie Roche A Radical Faith: The Assassination of Sister Maura by Eileen Markey (Nation Books, $US 26.99 / £21.00) It is difficult in this era of global communications to imagine what it must have been like for Sr Maura Clarke to leave behind the familiar, stable life in the convent in Ossining, New York and…
Women Writing War: Ireland 1880 – 1922 edited by Tina O’Toole, Gillian McIntosh, Muireann Ó Cinnéide (University College Dublin Press, €30) This is a collection of essays about war written from a feminist perspective. In the opening essay Diane Urquhart focuses on Anna Parnell, an archetypal feminist firebrand. Born in 1852, Anna was a sister…
Frank Litton Dorothy Day: The world will be saved by beauty, an intimate portrait of my grandmother by Kate Hennessy (Scribner, $27.99) Thérèse by Dorothy Day, foreword by Robert Ellsberg (Christian Classics, Ave Maria Press, £12.99) Cardinal Spellman (1889-1967) and Dorothy Day (1897-1980) were both important figures in the history of north American Catholicism in…
Pirates of the Caribbean: Salazar’s Revenge (12A) Johnny Depp has just come through a messy divorce. In addition he’s suing his management team for fraud so he could probably do with the ridiculous amounts of money they tend to offer him for twaddle like this. He’s also embroiled in a so-called ‘scandal’ about allegedly having…
The Art of John Piper, by David Fraser Jenkins and Hugh Fowler-Wright foreword by Luke Piper (Unicorn and The Portland Gallery, £45.00) John Piper is, I suspect, a name unfamiliar to many readers, but he is certainly among the finest artists of the 20th Century in these islands, and moreover one of the few artists…
Good Seed, Fertile Soil: Religious Vocations in Limerick: Biographical Dictionary: I West Limerick by J.M. Feheney (Iverus Publications, €25; copies from the author at jmfeheny@iol.ie, or The Bookstore, Newcastle West) This biographical dictionary features short profiles of almost 1,000 deceased members of the clergy and religious congregations from the 24 parishes in West Limerick. The…
John Wyse Jackson Molly Keane: A Life by Sally Phipps (Virago, £20) The writer Molly Keane was born in 1904 in Co. Kildare, a daughter of Moira O’Neill, the poet of the Glens of Antrim. She grew up in a horsey, Protestant family near Ferns, Co. Wexford, in an 18th-Century house that was burned in…
The world of books The present controversy over state prosecutions for blasphemy has raised once again unresolved issues concerning our libel laws, issues which really need to be settled once and for all. On the matter of blasphemy, the law has nothing to do with the Christian Churches, but is rather an attempt to mollify…
Last Friday night one of my favourite TV comedy series sadly came to an end. Parks and Recreation (RTÉ 2) had finally bowed out after seven seasons. I always found it funny, skilfully combining both wacky and subtle elements. The format was reminiscent of the American version of The Office and in fact the two…
Aubrey Malone
Peter Costello
Brendan O’Regan