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“... I n the mid-1930s,​ Mary Lavin was working on her PhD in Dublin. Her subject was Virginia Woolf. That she chose an author associated with such experimental works as Orlando and The Waves in a grey, conformist city that did more to send modernist writers into exile than to read them (Joyce and Beckett) tells us a lot about her confidence ...”

“... wanted to, and after that they went to Lourdes. My mother prayed at the grotto where the Virgin Mary appeared to Bernadette, and her prayers must have been answered, because two Enrights went out there, but three Enrights came back. In fact, my mother carried more than this, as yet undeclared, baby through Irish customs. My father told her to take the ...”

“... almost touching the roof of a lofty church, he was obviously drawing the familiar parallel between Mary and the Church itself. Again, when the room of the Virgin Annunciate was decorated with statues of Moses and Isaiah, these figures were included for a specific reason: Moses was a famous type or prefiguration of Christ, while Isaiah prophesied: ‘Behold, a ...”

“... More surprisingly, there is an essay about the out-of-fashion novelist and short story writer Mary Lavin. ‘About’ has to be the word because the piece is heavily contextual, using Lavin to illustrate the stranglehold of Catholicism on Irish lives. Celibacy and small-town respectability are laid at the feet of ...”