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Toibin travels through various catholic regions of Europe generally at times of high catholic festivals. The journey takes us from an Irish past in the 1950s-60s to Croatia's nationalist catholicism, a Regensburg (FRG) theology professor, an Old Firm match in Glasgow (Celtic win), repeatedly to Poland and also to the Czech republic, eventually to Sevilla's local chauvinist and self contradictory catholicism where people are ardent socialists but still will just as fervently support the annual processions of the Virgin. The book is at its strongest when focussing on observing local culture, 'ordinary' people, getting involved in discussion with people. The various passages on papal visits tend to become slightly boring after a while. Some passages can be frightening and distressing, when catholicism and nationalism go so closely hand in hand (Croatia). I was surprised that the author desperately tries to convince the reader that there is a problem with the fact that there are next to no catholics among the younger Scottish generation of writers. However, all his Scottish interview partners tell him, that they had never thought about it before and not a single one of them (not even the catholic) thought there was a problem. Toibin's obsession with possible discrimination seems strange and sectarian - about as absurdly out of place as if he had discovered that there were no left handed among Scotland's younger writers, and that the only explanation was discrimination... There is a passage in the book which seems entirely out of place. This is the confession about the author's experience in a psychotherapeutic seminar. It looks as if writing it down and publishing it - no matter in what context - had been part of the therapy rather than he result of literary judgment. Take away these small weak points and you'll read an entertaining and well observed book.
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