The Pilgrimage by John Broderick

An erotic nightmare of Catholic longing, guilt, and desire and a banned classic of modern Irish literature.

Wealthy and devout, Michael and Julia Glynn are the envy of their neighbors and the model Irish Catholic couple, bearing Michael’s increasingly painful and crippling arthritis with stoicism. In hope of a miracle, their priest suggests a family pilgrimage to Lourdes. Yet these pious holiday plans are thrown into disarray when anonymous, obscene letters begin to arrive, full of terrible accusations.

Banned in Ireland on its first publication in 1961, Broderick’s debut arrived “like an incendiary device” (Sunday Independent). The Pilgrimage anticipated the deep shifts that would soon turn the country’s theocratic society upside down. It is a darkly comic, blasphemous, and sexually charged chamber drama laying bare the hypocrisies of a small Irish town “as watchful as the jungle,” and teetering on the brink of catastrophe. In the words of Colm Tóibín, in his foreword to this edition, The Pilgrimage “cleared a space in the jungle so that its wildness could be more easily seen.”

REVIEWS

"Had The Pilgrimage been freely available in 1961 . . . [it] would have filled a silence about homosexuality that was almost total . . . What Broderick is attempting is a French novel set in an Irish town; he wishes to put dangerous liaisons into the Irish midlands, to allow his Irish characters the freedom to pray to God for their eternal souls and then get into a state of mortal sin with agility and ease.” ―Colm Tóibín

“A masterly piece of work . . . Ironic, sarcastic like Swift and Shaw, sentimental like The Playboy of the Western World . . . [Broderick] wrote with great simplicity, his pitiless eye stripping his characters bare and then letting the story clothe them.” ―Julien Green

“A taut stylish book that surely read like an incendiary device at the time . . . Broderick’s tightly controlled style is awash with the sharp humour of recognition. He exposes Catholicism but has no need to mock it. People go through empty rituals of observance and lead utterly secular and selfish lives, but it doesn’t mean God isn’t watching. With The Pilgrimage, Athlone found its Balzac . . . a man unafraid to confront taboos at a time when others felt it wiser to keep their heads down.” ―The Sunday Independent (Dublin) 

PRODUCT DETAILS
Paperback with French flaps
Publisher: McNally Editions
ISBN:  978-1946022950
Pages:  224