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January 2005
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January 2005
Willie Ryan is an old man who arrives back in his home town in 'the great central plain of Ireland', having escaped from the insane asylum where he was wrongfully incarcerated, and unvisited, by his devout Catholic family for twenty-five years. The given reason for his commitment was an attack on his sister-in-law, Mary Ryan, wife of his brother Michael. The true reason: a homosexual affair with a hedonistic young man who introduced him to art, literature and music. When he returns to his family, Mary continues to insist on Willie's insanity. After all, didn't he refuse to go to Confession or to attend Mass during all his years in the asylum? Together with Father Mannix - who was complicit in 'putting away' Willie - she conspires to bring about Willie's reconciliation with the church. For Willie's enemies, nothing evil has happened as long as it is not seen to have happened. But through Willie's piercing vision, we see the truth - his brother Michael's grief and remorse; his nephew Chris's fear of freedom; and the perceptiveness of asylum nurse Halloran. When Willie knows he is about to die, he agrees to a private family Mass, setting the stage for a confrontation with Father Mannix - one which will pitch moral integrity against the 'petty bourgeois snobbishness, hypocrisies and pretensions' of the 'little grocer's republic' of 1950s Ireland.
Julia Glynn is the very model of a 'prim and well-conducted' bourgeois Catholic wife, a regular Mass-goer and president of her local charitable society. Her crippled husband Michael is the richest man in town, held in awe by bankers and bishops alike. In his illness he is dutifully tended to by the household manservant Stephen Lydon and by his handsome young nephew Doctor Jim. As Michael's condition worsens, their friend Father Victor proposes a pilgrimage to Lourdes. When Julia begins receiving a series of obscene anonymous letters detailing her sexual infidelities with Jim, her suspicions fall on the 'sinister' Stephen. And what connection do Stephen and Michael have with the suicide of local boy Tommy Baggot, a well-known figure within Dublin's secretive homosexual community? Why does she find herself both attracted to and repelled by Stephen? As the day of departure to Lourdes approaches, John Broderick probes into the heart of an Irish small town that is 'as watchful as the jungle', stripping his characters of their 'respectable clothes' to reveal their true selves in all their selfishness and 'elemental sensuality'. The Pilgrimage's depiction of sexual need and the 'petty vices' of 1950s Ireland led to its banning by the Irish Censorship Board on its original publication in 1961. Under the title The Chameleons it sold over 100,000 copies in America. This re-issue restores Broderick to his rightful place alongside John McGahern and Brinsley MacNamara, taking a new generation of readers on a unique 'pilgrimage of the body'
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