Mary Gordon, whose novels include Final Payments and The Company of Women, states in a lecture given at the New York Public Library that her upbringing in the Catholic church was saturated with memorable sights and sounds and odors. The Mass with its drama and exalted language was, she notes, an excellent training ground for an aspiring novelist. And there is a poignancy in Mary Gordon's account of herself as a pious child who put thorns in her shoes for penance.
Glints of her early intensity shine through this collection of essays about literature, motherhood, abortion, creativity, and ethnic heritage. For instance, the title selection is a scathing attack on male mistreatment of women in fiction. Mary Gordon relishes the spiritual realism which she discovers in the novels and short stories of Flannery O'Connor, J.F. Powers, and Edna O'Brien. Of course, members of her extended family do not always share her unconventional views of religion and literature; several find her books dirty.
The closing essay is Mary Gordon's interpretation of The Gospel According to Saint Mark. Her observations on the cursed fig tree, Jesus as a healer, and the annointing of Mary are well worth savoring.