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“... minds and laws. It is a relief to turn from this hell-hole to the more mildly sinful world of Mary Flanagan, tracing the history of a naturally, perhaps reluctantly, bohemian girl in Britain. The motherless Clover is the beneficiary of a trust, and the word ‘trust’ recurs, discreetly but frequently, to advertise the theme or structure of ...”

“... historical material it presents with such unpretentious immediacy. Economy isn’t a feature of Mary Flanagan’s narrative method in Rose Reason, but then her time-scale is much more extended. Her heroine is born Frances Mullen among Irish Catholics in Florence, Maine. She takes the name Rose at Confirmation: ‘I saw my chance for a new identity and ...”

“... According​ to one of her cousins, Mary Flannery O’Connor was ‘a very peculiar child’. When she was six, she drew countless pictures of chickens. To discourage classmates from sharing her lunch, she would sometimes take castor oil sandwiches to school. Her own recollection of herself is characteristically acerbic: ‘a pigeon-toed only child with a receding chin and a you-leave-me-alone-or-I’ll-bite-you complex ...”

“... from late medieval readers, the novice is well advised to begin with an anthology such as Sabina Flanagan’s Secrets of God. This slender volume by the seer’s Australian biographer provides a sampler of her work. It includes excerpts from each book in Hildegard’s visionary trilogy: Scivias (‘Know the Ways of the Lord’), The Book of Life’s Merits ...”

“... than the version flourished in early snapshots – the cover of A Serial Biography, the Barry Flanagan etching from Act – but this is still the same mouth, the same disguise. The same bite. The lights are on and there is somebody at home. The speed of eye/ear/mind remains, absolutely, that of a particle accelerator. Heart is everything: the contrary of ...”

“... at Cambridge). We need information.That ‘second brief study’ which Bradshaw castigates is Mary Daly’s The Famine in Ireland, first published in 1986. This is a briskly-written, useful book, short on emotion, long on detail and cautious examination. Daly is careful not to blame the Administration. ‘The major distortion which the potato failure ...”