We still have Catholic novelists and Catholic novels, but, curiously, mainstream publishers are hesitant to use the label. That’s odd, given the size of the potential readership, but I assume they know what they’re doing. Then again, perhaps not. Fifty years ago, publishers would market to Catholics a novelist who writes about Catholics. At least one blurb on the jacket, for instance, would quote praise from Commonweal or America. Novels by Mary Gordon and Ron Hansen have not done this for decades. Their sales have likely suffered as a result.
We will never agree on what it means precisely to be Catholic or to write a Catholic novel. And another essay might be written on what it means to read, not so much write, as a Catholic. But in the spirit of the Rev. Andrew Greeley, let me suggest that Donal Ryan is overflowing with Catholic imagination. Ryan is one of the most powerful young novelists today. He has written two since The Thing About December, under review here. The next and latest, All We Shall Know, will be published in Ireland and England this September.
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