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The Pilgrimage
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'.
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'.
192 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1961
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Displaying 1 - 30 of 67 reviews
April 22, 2025
Now this is a Novel with a capital “N”! Juicy, addictive, layered, well plotted, brilliant character work. And a debut from 1961?! Banned at the time in Ireland. Republished now by McNally editions. It’s deceptively complex. What seems like a simple page-turner lends much more to the mind than is immediately apparent.
The story revolves around a cast of main characters in a wealthy Irish home in the mid 20th century. Michael is arthritic and bedridden, cared for by his nephew & doctor, Jim, and his wife, Julia. There’s also Stephen, their manservant and the occasional visit from the local priest. It is rural Ireland after all and Catholicism reigns supreme, even if not taken very seriously by its observers. In an effort to seek a miracle to cure Michael’s ailments, the family plans a pilgrimage to Lourdes. But when mysterious letters start showing up detailing a secret that Julia would rather remain in the dark, things begin to unravel in ways that are deliciously readable and thought provoking in equal measure.
I don’t want to say too much about this book’s plot because it is SO FUN, and the book is barely 200 pages so it’s perfect for a binge read.
What I will say is that I loved how this book explored so many facets of love, sexuality, and human connection. It was sort of tongue in cheek, while also being very sincere, balancing the comical and the tragic expertly. These are characters who seem a bit cartoonish at first, but fill out as the story goes on until you’re left with an almost laugh at loud (at least for me) ending. It was delightful.
The story revolves around a cast of main characters in a wealthy Irish home in the mid 20th century. Michael is arthritic and bedridden, cared for by his nephew & doctor, Jim, and his wife, Julia. There’s also Stephen, their manservant and the occasional visit from the local priest. It is rural Ireland after all and Catholicism reigns supreme, even if not taken very seriously by its observers. In an effort to seek a miracle to cure Michael’s ailments, the family plans a pilgrimage to Lourdes. But when mysterious letters start showing up detailing a secret that Julia would rather remain in the dark, things begin to unravel in ways that are deliciously readable and thought provoking in equal measure.
I don’t want to say too much about this book’s plot because it is SO FUN, and the book is barely 200 pages so it’s perfect for a binge read.
What I will say is that I loved how this book explored so many facets of love, sexuality, and human connection. It was sort of tongue in cheek, while also being very sincere, balancing the comical and the tragic expertly. These are characters who seem a bit cartoonish at first, but fill out as the story goes on until you’re left with an almost laugh at loud (at least for me) ending. It was delightful.
April 10, 2025
A must read if you went to Catholic school & you’re a little gay
August 3, 2025
The Pilgrimage was banned upon release in 1961 Ireland for its depiction of (homo)sexuality and critique of the Catholic Church. The book deals with life behind closed doors of "upstanding" members of society and their secrets, desires, and guilt.
Julia is married to the wealthiest man in town, Michael, who's an invalid due to his arthritis. She's also having a secret affair with Michael's nephew and doctor, Jim, and has started to receive anonymous letters salaciously detailing their encounters. In hopes of curing Michael's illness, their local priest suggests a trip to Lourdes in search of a divine miracle and Julia, husband Michael, nephew Jim, and servant Stephen are set to go as the book details their planning while Julia tries to figure out who sent the letters.
This was my first Irish classic and I'm so impressed with Broderick's writing. It's a shorter book, beautifully written, and packs a punch. Recounting the events would make the book seem dramatic but the characters are all decidedly devoid of dramatic reactions and emotions, a contrast that makes for a fairly sober and tense yet darkly funny read. The setting is somewhat claustrophic - it takes places within a small town where everyone knows everyone and gossip is impossible to escape and the vast majority of scenes are at Julia and Michael's house, especially in Julia's bedroom.
Nearly all the men are gay or bisexual - or can be read as thus - and the harsh realities of life in the 1950s for both queer people and women are central parts of The Pilgrimage. The hypocrisy of the Catholic Church is another running theme throughout and the local priest and his weekly visits to Michael's bedside always end with him being driven home since he imbibes too much while he's there.
The characters are all seen as good, upstanding, Catholic members of society but behind closed doors, they're all much different than who they portray to the outside world. No one is entirely likable, some are downright horrible, and they all make unpleasant and unsympathetic choices. It's hard to entirely fault them though since their options in life are limited by society, the church, and circumstance and this complexity adds to how interesting a read The Pilgrimage is.
Finally, the last "chapter" had me first yelling "WHAT" loudly and then bursting into laughter and I'm still mulling over the various possible meanings of it.
In short: fascinating book, beautifully written, intriguing look into a small town in 1950s Ireland where everyone's real lives take place behind closed doors and no one's really who they portray to the world.
I don't usually give content warnings but since there are none in the book itself, be aware that The Pilgrimage contains scenes of
Julia is married to the wealthiest man in town, Michael, who's an invalid due to his arthritis. She's also having a secret affair with Michael's nephew and doctor, Jim, and has started to receive anonymous letters salaciously detailing their encounters. In hopes of curing Michael's illness, their local priest suggests a trip to Lourdes in search of a divine miracle and Julia, husband Michael, nephew Jim, and servant Stephen are set to go as the book details their planning while Julia tries to figure out who sent the letters.
This was my first Irish classic and I'm so impressed with Broderick's writing. It's a shorter book, beautifully written, and packs a punch. Recounting the events would make the book seem dramatic but the characters are all decidedly devoid of dramatic reactions and emotions, a contrast that makes for a fairly sober and tense yet darkly funny read. The setting is somewhat claustrophic - it takes places within a small town where everyone knows everyone and gossip is impossible to escape and the vast majority of scenes are at Julia and Michael's house, especially in Julia's bedroom.
Nearly all the men are gay or bisexual - or can be read as thus - and the harsh realities of life in the 1950s for both queer people and women are central parts of The Pilgrimage. The hypocrisy of the Catholic Church is another running theme throughout and the local priest and his weekly visits to Michael's bedside always end with him being driven home since he imbibes too much while he's there.
The characters are all seen as good, upstanding, Catholic members of society but behind closed doors, they're all much different than who they portray to the outside world. No one is entirely likable, some are downright horrible, and they all make unpleasant and unsympathetic choices. It's hard to entirely fault them though since their options in life are limited by society, the church, and circumstance and this complexity adds to how interesting a read The Pilgrimage is.
Finally, the last "chapter" had me first yelling "WHAT" loudly and then bursting into laughter and I'm still mulling over the various possible meanings of it.
In short: fascinating book, beautifully written, intriguing look into a small town in 1950s Ireland where everyone's real lives take place behind closed doors and no one's really who they portray to the world.
I don't usually give content warnings but since there are none in the book itself, be aware that The Pilgrimage contains scenes of
March 9, 2020
Banned for years in Ireland, this is a cynical, claustrophobic, and very readable short novel about the secret life of a wife of a local pillar of the establishment in an Irish town. Faced with anonymous letters detailing her affair with her invalided husband’s nephew, she is terrified of being found out and suspicious of the family servant. At the same time, her husband is planning a pilgrimage to Lourdes, accompanied by wife, nephew, and servant.
A quote: “Sometimes, looking down on the huddled roofs and spires of the place from her bedroom window she felt that she hated it. Nothing that was not small had ever happened there; nothing of passion, or pride, or reckless emotion. Small change rattled on small wooden counters, and was stored away in little bags, and doled out in small, grudging amounts by grubby hands whose deliberate movements reflected the careful rhythm of small minds. A little town like all little towns, compounded of petty vices: envy, spite, suspicion, greed. In that atmosphere of careful virtues and furtive pleasures watchfulness flourished like a huge obscene creeper on an ancient house.”
A quote: “Sometimes, looking down on the huddled roofs and spires of the place from her bedroom window she felt that she hated it. Nothing that was not small had ever happened there; nothing of passion, or pride, or reckless emotion. Small change rattled on small wooden counters, and was stored away in little bags, and doled out in small, grudging amounts by grubby hands whose deliberate movements reflected the careful rhythm of small minds. A little town like all little towns, compounded of petty vices: envy, spite, suspicion, greed. In that atmosphere of careful virtues and furtive pleasures watchfulness flourished like a huge obscene creeper on an ancient house.”
July 19, 2025
It really is a juicy little novel, showing all the various deviations underneath the prim Irish Catholic surface, all the more remarkable for being written in 1961.
June 4, 2025
Catholic guilt is one hell of a drug
May 23, 2025
This is a novel that I would need to read in a classroom setting, primarily because I want to know what the Irish censorship board objected to the most. I enjoyed the story: infirm man with younger wife plans for a pilgrimage to Lourdes, where he hopes to be cured, and she spends most of her time engaging in relations with other (unrelated) family members and servants. There's a lot happening under the surface that I'm not quite sure I got, as I was reading this with a head cold, and I did in fact put down the book at one point and repeat one of the sentences aloud until it permeated my brain. Lots of stuff about the church, the stifling nature of small towns, piety, etc. I especially liked the framing of Julia's relationship with Howard and her eternal search for its shadow. And that ending !
I was excited that Colm Toibin wrote the foreword because I wanted him to explain this book to me (I'm dying to take his class on the twentieth century Irish novel), but he spent the foreword talking about the time he saw John Broderick on a street corner in Dublin and what kind of suit he was wearing (to be clear, I also want this content in the class).
I was excited that Colm Toibin wrote the foreword because I wanted him to explain this book to me (I'm dying to take his class on the twentieth century Irish novel), but he spent the foreword talking about the time he saw John Broderick on a street corner in Dublin and what kind of suit he was wearing (to be clear, I also want this content in the class).
October 11, 2024
Had sat there gathering dust, acquired heaven knows where or when, until Broderick's current
(quiet) centenary celebration stuck it right back on my radar. What a debut. Ripe with the seeping wounds and suppressed longings of Catholic Ireland, touching on all its strange implications while feeling rigidly self-contained. There'll be more of his.
(quiet) centenary celebration stuck it right back on my radar. What a debut. Ripe with the seeping wounds and suppressed longings of Catholic Ireland, touching on all its strange implications while feeling rigidly self-contained. There'll be more of his.
August 1, 2016
Really great writing.
Really captures the atmosphere of 1950's Ireland in small
parishes where the church ruled the roost.
Really captures the atmosphere of 1950's Ireland in small
parishes where the church ruled the roost.
May 10, 2025
Catholic guilt is such a delightful plot device that makes everyone's actions and motives all the more intriguing.
May 27, 2025
Read because of Toibins new introduction. Certaintly an interesting artifact of its time; otherwise not too memorable for me!
February 22, 2025
In his debut novel The Pilgrimage Irish-born John Broderick (1924 – 1989) attempts what in his time and place --1960s Ireland-- constitutes the impossible: defaming tradition. In just over 200 pages does Broderick sully the dignity of the Church, uproot the virtues of marriage, shed light on the growing homosexual community, and catapult us into bed with Julia Glynn's rough-and-tumble lovers. In these venues and others, Broderick encages his very Irish characters in a very French story.
Regrettably, though, these traditions bind Broderick down just as tightly. He clearly knows that the Irish weren't ready for his scathing story, and although this fuels his creative ambition, these traditions still functionally hobble the French story that Broderick desperately tries to present.
Which makes sense, considering the world the author both builds and lives in. The Pilgrimage is a very Irish book in setting and tone, both in which the sleepy solemnity of the town reads very true to life. The gray skies threaten a sprinkling of rain, the overbearing community priests a sprinkling of chrism upon your sins. The patrons in the market and public houses stare with that perfect infusion of convivial and watchful eyes as you, bearing Julia's guilt and lust, put a brave face atop your paranoia. All said with a literary melancholy that I haven't seen done this well since Dubliners. Broderick, in situating us alongside him, succeeds.
In many cases, the setting lingers on his characters like smoke singeing Aran wool. Father Victor, in particular, has a rambling musicality in his voice that tumbles around the point he's trying to make and for that reason smacks of Beckett's characters. At the same time, this wandering talk makes the reticence of characters like Stephen so alarming and the interiority of Julia --harboring so many secret pains-- so interesting. It's this contrast that Broderick does well that feeds us readers enough silence to know when things aren't well in the house.
This interesting interiority --note the vague adjective here-- does help us to navigate Julia's anxieties in a way that places us in the unsettling house with her. For the most part, however, I don't think it's written as articulately as it could have been, especially since her mind is our orientation throughout the novel. In many spots, particularly in Chapter 3, the setup begins too diegetically, a hydrant’s blast to the face when all we ask for is a drink of water. In other spots, the actions around her situation render the interiority banal and too obvious to pen. Most egregiously, however, are the moments when it becomes insultingly clear that Julia's interiority came from a man.
Not to mention the frightening lack of interiority devoted to interrogating the two sexual assaults Julia endures in the text.
The traumas that flank her from every side go largely undiscussed, which leads me to levy my ultimate critique against The Pilgrimage: it's mostly breadth with too little depth. Perhaps the Irish social order of the '60s prevented Broderick from articulating Julia's assaults or Stephen's bisexual panic; nevertheless, Broderick chooses not to pick a lane and because of this, none of the tensions receive neither the attention nor the articulation they demand. Different identities go talked about, but in the hush-hush way that actually undermines a productive talking about.
I want to call this an empowering queer story, but it's hardly empowering and insufficiently queer. I want to call this a story of a woman unfettered, but that's not it either. What this story is is an attempt to be everything that achieves little more than a stir of mud and noise.
You might not believe me at this point, but I mean it when I say that I'm trying to give The Pilgrimage as much grace as I can. For that reason, I'm chalking up the brutal rejection of a non-ending as political pressure from Broderick's editors. But perhaps because of this pressure is The Pilgrimage an unsatisfying book from its conception: its social and religious upbringing limited the power it could ever hope to exert. With all possible grace, I can only conclude that The Pilgrimage is a remarkably daring attempt to spark the Irish social justice that other writers would eventually stand on to achieve.
Regrettably, though, these traditions bind Broderick down just as tightly. He clearly knows that the Irish weren't ready for his scathing story, and although this fuels his creative ambition, these traditions still functionally hobble the French story that Broderick desperately tries to present.
Which makes sense, considering the world the author both builds and lives in. The Pilgrimage is a very Irish book in setting and tone, both in which the sleepy solemnity of the town reads very true to life. The gray skies threaten a sprinkling of rain, the overbearing community priests a sprinkling of chrism upon your sins. The patrons in the market and public houses stare with that perfect infusion of convivial and watchful eyes as you, bearing Julia's guilt and lust, put a brave face atop your paranoia. All said with a literary melancholy that I haven't seen done this well since Dubliners. Broderick, in situating us alongside him, succeeds.
In many cases, the setting lingers on his characters like smoke singeing Aran wool. Father Victor, in particular, has a rambling musicality in his voice that tumbles around the point he's trying to make and for that reason smacks of Beckett's characters. At the same time, this wandering talk makes the reticence of characters like Stephen so alarming and the interiority of Julia --harboring so many secret pains-- so interesting. It's this contrast that Broderick does well that feeds us readers enough silence to know when things aren't well in the house.
This interesting interiority --note the vague adjective here-- does help us to navigate Julia's anxieties in a way that places us in the unsettling house with her. For the most part, however, I don't think it's written as articulately as it could have been, especially since her mind is our orientation throughout the novel. In many spots, particularly in Chapter 3, the setup begins too diegetically, a hydrant’s blast to the face when all we ask for is a drink of water. In other spots, the actions around her situation render the interiority banal and too obvious to pen. Most egregiously, however, are the moments when it becomes insultingly clear that Julia's interiority came from a man.
Not to mention the frightening lack of interiority devoted to interrogating the two sexual assaults Julia endures in the text.
The traumas that flank her from every side go largely undiscussed, which leads me to levy my ultimate critique against The Pilgrimage: it's mostly breadth with too little depth. Perhaps the Irish social order of the '60s prevented Broderick from articulating Julia's assaults or Stephen's bisexual panic; nevertheless, Broderick chooses not to pick a lane and because of this, none of the tensions receive neither the attention nor the articulation they demand. Different identities go talked about, but in the hush-hush way that actually undermines a productive talking about.
I want to call this an empowering queer story, but it's hardly empowering and insufficiently queer. I want to call this a story of a woman unfettered, but that's not it either. What this story is is an attempt to be everything that achieves little more than a stir of mud and noise.
You might not believe me at this point, but I mean it when I say that I'm trying to give The Pilgrimage as much grace as I can. For that reason, I'm chalking up the brutal rejection of a non-ending as political pressure from Broderick's editors. But perhaps because of this pressure is The Pilgrimage an unsatisfying book from its conception: its social and religious upbringing limited the power it could ever hope to exert. With all possible grace, I can only conclude that The Pilgrimage is a remarkably daring attempt to spark the Irish social justice that other writers would eventually stand on to achieve.
April 22, 2025
This was so so excellent. A really sarcastic humor, and also insightful on human nature. A drawing room drama of betrayal, where every other sentence can take your breath away. John Broderick understood the small town Irish society he was in only as someone who once loved it and had to leave it could. This is compared to an experiment in trying to put a French novel in a small town, and I think it succeeded. I wish it hadn’t been banned when it was published, as it brings so many things out into the open.
Broderick is not as famous as some of his contemporaries who wrote similar stories (small town Irish people living with secrets) and that’s a shame because this was wonderful. It felt as fresh today as it would have in 1961. Especially, he’s a queer author writing about queer people in a time and place where the silence around it was total. He seems at heart a romantic, but unable to express it. Many of the quotes will stick with me, as will Julia herself, but in particular “She could not understand it: she had always been lonely only in crowds”, “When the capacity for wonder has been exhausted, there is little left but pity in the place of love”, and “She felt the terrible restlessness of those who are cut off inexorably from their own people; that, and the occasional feeling of anarchy that lurks in every woman.”
Shoutout to McNally Editions for publishing books like this!
Broderick is not as famous as some of his contemporaries who wrote similar stories (small town Irish people living with secrets) and that’s a shame because this was wonderful. It felt as fresh today as it would have in 1961. Especially, he’s a queer author writing about queer people in a time and place where the silence around it was total. He seems at heart a romantic, but unable to express it. Many of the quotes will stick with me, as will Julia herself, but in particular “She could not understand it: she had always been lonely only in crowds”, “When the capacity for wonder has been exhausted, there is little left but pity in the place of love”, and “She felt the terrible restlessness of those who are cut off inexorably from their own people; that, and the occasional feeling of anarchy that lurks in every woman.”
Shoutout to McNally Editions for publishing books like this!
March 8, 2025
Well written, well-paced. However, everyone in this book was horrible. A book doesn't have to have likeable characters but after a while, with this one, I just wanted to get it finished. Because the characters were all so horrible I didn't really care what happened to them. Relationships are abusive yet the characters are in love. Really? They all need a good psychiatrist.
June 20, 2019
Good book, fine characters. Pitch perfect tone...
December 23, 2024
Džiulija buvo nepakenčiama 🙄
March 30, 2025
Really enjoyed this novel, written in 1961 by Irish author John Broderick and recently reissued by the wonderful McNally Editions, which is always unearthing nearly forgotten treasures.
July 2, 2021
Kurį laiką buvusi uždrausta Airijoje knyga apie slapčiausias žmonių aistras. Istorija, kuri labai tiktų teatrui ir kuri patiks, visiems jį mêgstantiems. Trumpa, įtraukianti, intriguojanti knyga kartais neaišku labiau apie meilės ar apie kūniško malonumo paieškas, bet lyg ir leidžianti pajausti, kad viena be kito nepadaro žmones laimingais.
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June 30, 2025I fear I am too smooth-brained for this book 😩
September 14, 2025
4.5 - super fun!
December 2, 2025
No book that seriously uses the phrase “they went on a pilgrimage of the body” to describe sex can earn more than a star
Read
July 19, 2025an insanely pointed and insightful portrayal of a closeted catholic man driving himself slowly but surely towards insanity. and the loneliness of it all, particularly of the one woman surrounded only ever by men, so much so that she is both addicted to their presence and numb to it. i wish both julia and stephen could leave, but of course, the point is that they never can.
March 24, 2025
FUCK I LOVED THIS BOOK.
September 4, 2025
Absolutely loved this book.
For starters, the writing was so sharp. It wasn’t dense language but filled with depth and genius observations about people, Catholicism, repression, and sex. The plot was riveting and propulsive and the characters were incredibly fleshed out and complex.
It is easy to see why it was banned in Ireland upon first publication but what a shame that it was. The novel is genuinely funny and yet so thoughtful about emotions and actions of flawed people. It’s about redemption and sex, and it was so fascinating to see the takedown of “perfect” catholic people. It’s rare to see a literary novel so filled with smart writing and yet so pleasurable to read.
I was blown away by the observations - several lines were casually complex that they hit you over the head. One example: “We can only give to other people what they can see in us.” Another: “For Julia, like everybody else, had a conception of her own character which was completely different from that held by those who knew her.”
Absolutely recommend, but I would dare to say required reading for anyone who was brought up Catholic and is queer, or just a bit of a freak.
For starters, the writing was so sharp. It wasn’t dense language but filled with depth and genius observations about people, Catholicism, repression, and sex. The plot was riveting and propulsive and the characters were incredibly fleshed out and complex.
It is easy to see why it was banned in Ireland upon first publication but what a shame that it was. The novel is genuinely funny and yet so thoughtful about emotions and actions of flawed people. It’s about redemption and sex, and it was so fascinating to see the takedown of “perfect” catholic people. It’s rare to see a literary novel so filled with smart writing and yet so pleasurable to read.
I was blown away by the observations - several lines were casually complex that they hit you over the head. One example: “We can only give to other people what they can see in us.” Another: “For Julia, like everybody else, had a conception of her own character which was completely different from that held by those who knew her.”
Absolutely recommend, but I would dare to say required reading for anyone who was brought up Catholic and is queer, or just a bit of a freak.
December 14, 2025
Sharp but not really cruel. Short and quick and very exactly captures sex and power and personal politics of a small town.
February 8, 2025
John Broderick
The Pilgrimage
McNally Editions (ARC Edelweiss)
224 pages
March 4, 2025
Blurb "What habits threatened those sinners in {The Pilgrimage} now happen any weekend."
While Edna O'Brien's celebrated for her sexual frankness, and John McGahern's remembered for his enforced exile for his own erotic excursions, fictional and factual, these Irish exemplars of exposing hypocrisy, uncovering infidelity and dramatizating affairs overshadowed a third writer from the '60s.
As Colm Tóibín's necessary introduction explains, John Broderick's 1961 debut novel, {The Pilgrimage}, examines a sordid scenario in an unnamed small city in mid-century, postwar Ireland. While Brinsley MacNamara's claustrophobic melodrama {The Valley of the Squinting Windows} anticipated this genre back in the Great War before the island achieved partial independence from Britain, and O'Brien's {The Country Girl} (1960} and McGahern's {The Dark} (1965) eviscerated rural repression amidst clerical corruption and small-town scandal, Broderick's version, if very much in the pattern of his peers in adapting a feverish, French-tinged style and a plot full of couplings, all the same stands out, extending beyond heterosexual equations. For {The Pilgrimage} of going to Lourdes for an avuncular businessman's cure turns out, after a fumbling, nearly inchoate evocation of chilly passions played out which refuse to bestow tenderness or indulge sentimentality, a plot upended.
Broderick stumbles as he sets out a rent-boy rationale for generating a ménage à quatre. A few names of those guilty as charged--with blackmail, double-crossing, poison-pen letters in the post and other conventions of a lowlife pulp genre--will stay redacted to avoid spoilers. Yet despite a dreary, inert and predictable middle stretch, the pace steadies as the hysterical, hyperventilating and histrionic hookups settle down into a shift of gender roles, seductive strategies and unconventional adaptations.
For better or worse, Broderick filters the entire tale through a nervous, selfish and narcissistic protagonist. Julia Glynn's indirect first-person perception of the pumped-up but petty impulses which drive her into debasement and despair may reflect Broderick's bent. That is, {The Pilgrimage} for all its romps and couches remains stuck in the mire. The shame and stain of sex permeate, and neither perfume nor baths, cologne nor peppermints, manage to mask an torpid aftermath of aging bodies who come together bitterly, not lovingly. Courtship's reduced to a sniff of fragrance, a grope.
Nearly losing any semblance of verisimilitude, {The Pilgrimage} nevertheless earns a place if on not the top shelf of literary successes from the land of so many eminent rivals for outstanding narratives, than honorable mention for sheer effort at trying to pull off a presentation which attempts, however clumsily, to portray everyday folks in market-town Ireland within living memory who resist the leers, inspire the jeers and insist on plunging themselves into promiscuity. Not as moral models, heaven knows. But to escape their country's dead grip of puritanical oppression, material deprivation and intellectual suppression. Still, it's a mercy that the sidekick priest doesn't turn out to chase altar boys.
What Broderick doesn't suggest, Tóibín hints as he ends his preface. Whether or not people back a few generations frantically copulated as often as the staged, raging and engorged figures who prepare to embark for France alongside their fellow parishioners, nonetheless, these four citizens stand, smoke, sweat and sleep together as harbingers of the secularized, post-Catholic and spiritually vacant polity of millions of their descendants. For Ireland today's fallen from former airs and sorry graces. What habits threatened those sinners in {The Pilgrimage} now happen any torrid night or woozy weekend.
The Pilgrimage
McNally Editions (ARC Edelweiss)
224 pages
March 4, 2025
Blurb "What habits threatened those sinners in {The Pilgrimage} now happen any weekend."
While Edna O'Brien's celebrated for her sexual frankness, and John McGahern's remembered for his enforced exile for his own erotic excursions, fictional and factual, these Irish exemplars of exposing hypocrisy, uncovering infidelity and dramatizating affairs overshadowed a third writer from the '60s.
As Colm Tóibín's necessary introduction explains, John Broderick's 1961 debut novel, {The Pilgrimage}, examines a sordid scenario in an unnamed small city in mid-century, postwar Ireland. While Brinsley MacNamara's claustrophobic melodrama {The Valley of the Squinting Windows} anticipated this genre back in the Great War before the island achieved partial independence from Britain, and O'Brien's {The Country Girl} (1960} and McGahern's {The Dark} (1965) eviscerated rural repression amidst clerical corruption and small-town scandal, Broderick's version, if very much in the pattern of his peers in adapting a feverish, French-tinged style and a plot full of couplings, all the same stands out, extending beyond heterosexual equations. For {The Pilgrimage} of going to Lourdes for an avuncular businessman's cure turns out, after a fumbling, nearly inchoate evocation of chilly passions played out which refuse to bestow tenderness or indulge sentimentality, a plot upended.
Broderick stumbles as he sets out a rent-boy rationale for generating a ménage à quatre. A few names of those guilty as charged--with blackmail, double-crossing, poison-pen letters in the post and other conventions of a lowlife pulp genre--will stay redacted to avoid spoilers. Yet despite a dreary, inert and predictable middle stretch, the pace steadies as the hysterical, hyperventilating and histrionic hookups settle down into a shift of gender roles, seductive strategies and unconventional adaptations.
For better or worse, Broderick filters the entire tale through a nervous, selfish and narcissistic protagonist. Julia Glynn's indirect first-person perception of the pumped-up but petty impulses which drive her into debasement and despair may reflect Broderick's bent. That is, {The Pilgrimage} for all its romps and couches remains stuck in the mire. The shame and stain of sex permeate, and neither perfume nor baths, cologne nor peppermints, manage to mask an torpid aftermath of aging bodies who come together bitterly, not lovingly. Courtship's reduced to a sniff of fragrance, a grope.
Nearly losing any semblance of verisimilitude, {The Pilgrimage} nevertheless earns a place if on not the top shelf of literary successes from the land of so many eminent rivals for outstanding narratives, than honorable mention for sheer effort at trying to pull off a presentation which attempts, however clumsily, to portray everyday folks in market-town Ireland within living memory who resist the leers, inspire the jeers and insist on plunging themselves into promiscuity. Not as moral models, heaven knows. But to escape their country's dead grip of puritanical oppression, material deprivation and intellectual suppression. Still, it's a mercy that the sidekick priest doesn't turn out to chase altar boys.
What Broderick doesn't suggest, Tóibín hints as he ends his preface. Whether or not people back a few generations frantically copulated as often as the staged, raging and engorged figures who prepare to embark for France alongside their fellow parishioners, nonetheless, these four citizens stand, smoke, sweat and sleep together as harbingers of the secularized, post-Catholic and spiritually vacant polity of millions of their descendants. For Ireland today's fallen from former airs and sorry graces. What habits threatened those sinners in {The Pilgrimage} now happen any torrid night or woozy weekend.
August 7, 2025
I’m going to start this review by saying: READ THIS BOOK.
The Pilgrimage by John Broderick is a riveting soap opera of a story about a wealthy couple living in a midcentury Irish town. The story is told from the perspective of the wife, Julia, who begins the novel having an affair with Jim, her husband’s nephew (and doctor). Her husband, Michael, is a closeted (natch) gay man who is also disabled and spends all his time in bed being tended to by a handsome servant named Stephen.
Michael, despite his ‘nature’ is devoted to the church. He is determined to go on a pilgrimage to Lourdes, in the hopes that he will be healed from his affliction. Julia, believing this to be a fool’s errand, nevertheless supports the idea and assists in the planning. The two of them decide that Jim and Stephen should accompany them on their journey, and they obtain their consent.
The entire novel spans several weeks and months as they prepare for their spiritual journey. A plot centering on Julia’s relationships, first with Jim and then with Stephen, begins to unfold. Julia is the sole woman among this cast of male characters, and she defies the ‘idealized’ Catholic wife stereotype. She is practical, sleeping with other men as a way to satisfy her physical desires, uninterested in forming any real attachment to them. Throughout the book, she views events and people clinically with an almost utilitarian outlook. She has no faith and very little interest in pretending otherwise.
When anonymous letters begin to arrive, threatening to uncover her secret affair with Jim, Julia becomes preoccupied with trying to find the source. This leads to her (correct) suspicion that Stephen is the author of the letters. Stephen, in turn, is confused about his own sexuality and attaches himself to Julia, claiming to be in love with her. He is less interested in sex than in other forms of intimacy, which Julia finds extremely discomforting.
As I said, this is all very soap-y… but in a good way! A surface-level reading of the book makes it a fun diversion. A deeper reading, however, allows us to encounter so many of the social and religious factors that confronted the author, himself a gay Irishman, during his lifetime. In The Pilgrimage, we discover a world of black-and-white ideology built upon a multi-colored rainbow of human experience. It is an insistent and rebellious telling of the reality of life under the heavy hand of a conservative, even oppressive environment that defines each of the characters’ motives while undermining their identities.
The Pilgrimage was banned in Ireland after it was published, which is a perfectly good reason in and of itself to read it. But it’s also a powerful, unflinching look at how human beings construct ideals that fail to take into consideration the reality of who we are – and the (sometimes hilarious, sometimes tragic) folly that results.
Again: READ IT.
The Pilgrimage by John Broderick is a riveting soap opera of a story about a wealthy couple living in a midcentury Irish town. The story is told from the perspective of the wife, Julia, who begins the novel having an affair with Jim, her husband’s nephew (and doctor). Her husband, Michael, is a closeted (natch) gay man who is also disabled and spends all his time in bed being tended to by a handsome servant named Stephen.
Michael, despite his ‘nature’ is devoted to the church. He is determined to go on a pilgrimage to Lourdes, in the hopes that he will be healed from his affliction. Julia, believing this to be a fool’s errand, nevertheless supports the idea and assists in the planning. The two of them decide that Jim and Stephen should accompany them on their journey, and they obtain their consent.
The entire novel spans several weeks and months as they prepare for their spiritual journey. A plot centering on Julia’s relationships, first with Jim and then with Stephen, begins to unfold. Julia is the sole woman among this cast of male characters, and she defies the ‘idealized’ Catholic wife stereotype. She is practical, sleeping with other men as a way to satisfy her physical desires, uninterested in forming any real attachment to them. Throughout the book, she views events and people clinically with an almost utilitarian outlook. She has no faith and very little interest in pretending otherwise.
When anonymous letters begin to arrive, threatening to uncover her secret affair with Jim, Julia becomes preoccupied with trying to find the source. This leads to her (correct) suspicion that Stephen is the author of the letters. Stephen, in turn, is confused about his own sexuality and attaches himself to Julia, claiming to be in love with her. He is less interested in sex than in other forms of intimacy, which Julia finds extremely discomforting.
As I said, this is all very soap-y… but in a good way! A surface-level reading of the book makes it a fun diversion. A deeper reading, however, allows us to encounter so many of the social and religious factors that confronted the author, himself a gay Irishman, during his lifetime. In The Pilgrimage, we discover a world of black-and-white ideology built upon a multi-colored rainbow of human experience. It is an insistent and rebellious telling of the reality of life under the heavy hand of a conservative, even oppressive environment that defines each of the characters’ motives while undermining their identities.
The Pilgrimage was banned in Ireland after it was published, which is a perfectly good reason in and of itself to read it. But it’s also a powerful, unflinching look at how human beings construct ideals that fail to take into consideration the reality of who we are – and the (sometimes hilarious, sometimes tragic) folly that results.
Again: READ IT.
May 7, 2025
This book starts very cleverly with a servant, Stephen, eavesdropping on his employers, Michael and Julia Glynn, as they are discussing the possibility of joining a pilgrimage to Lourdes organized by their parish priest Father Victor, thereby making the reader speculate about the couple's secrets. Michael, a successful business crippled with arthritis, is very eager to seek a miracle cure. His beautiful and sensual wife, who had an affair with Michael's nephew Jim even before she met Michael, doesn't care one way or the other. For both of them it was a marriage of convenience: Michael, who is gay (in 1950s Ireland) needed a beard, and Julia, whose American lover disappeared on her, was only too happy to marry for money. Julia still sleeps with Jim, unaware of the fact that the ambitious young doctor is busy courting a girl from a rich and influential family. Anonymous letters graphically detailing their trysts send Julia into a panic. Her suspicions soon circle around the visibly repressed Stephen. One night she follows him into town and sees him in conversation with a younger man, who is found dead from suicide the following day. Julia finds out that the boy, who was one of her husband's former rent boys, was the object of platonic devotion on the part of Stephen. One night Stephen practically rapes Julia, but she doesn't mind rough sex and sees every advantage in having a new lover now that Jim has announced his engagement. Plans for the pilgrimage proceed in spite of the fact that the bishop is furious that wealthy Michael is going to Lourdes with his parish priest instead of waiting for the more prestigious pilgrimage he has scheduled for a later date. This is a solid story of hypocrisy and sexual repression in a country still dominated by the Catholic Church, but I wouldn't call it "a masterpiece of irony". Michael remains a very shadowy figure and the abrupt ending is most unsatisfactory.
September 3, 2025
This was absolutely incredible, one of the best books I’ve read in a while, and I’ve been reading a lot lately. The book was first published in 1961 and quickly banned afterwards, sinking it into the obscurity of the unknown and what a shame it is. What initially appears to be a story about adultery and depravity is actually a profound exploration of loneliness, heartbreak, and how we idealize our first love that is lost and spend our lives trying to find it again and what a universal experience it is.
Broderick’s writing is exceptionally well observed and clever. I found myself re-reading passages multiple times just to absorb the brilliance of his insights into human nature. The characters felt completely real and human, not like literary constructs but like people you could actually know.
What makes this book so impactful is how it shows that what appears to be depravity on the surface is really the logical result of deep loneliness colliding with a religious worldview that twists the meaning of physical connection. When you see sex through the prism of religion, it really becomes impossible to connect with another person kindly or naturally, making it impossible to recreate what has been lost.
Broderick has created an extraordinary psychological study that reveals so much about the human condition with incredible subtlety and intelligence. It’s a masterpiece of psychological observation. The ending is absolutely brilliant and hands down one of the best endings I’ve ever read. I cannot recommend this book enough if you like to explore the darker corners of the human heart.
Broderick’s writing is exceptionally well observed and clever. I found myself re-reading passages multiple times just to absorb the brilliance of his insights into human nature. The characters felt completely real and human, not like literary constructs but like people you could actually know.
What makes this book so impactful is how it shows that what appears to be depravity on the surface is really the logical result of deep loneliness colliding with a religious worldview that twists the meaning of physical connection. When you see sex through the prism of religion, it really becomes impossible to connect with another person kindly or naturally, making it impossible to recreate what has been lost.
Broderick has created an extraordinary psychological study that reveals so much about the human condition with incredible subtlety and intelligence. It’s a masterpiece of psychological observation. The ending is absolutely brilliant and hands down one of the best endings I’ve ever read. I cannot recommend this book enough if you like to explore the darker corners of the human heart.
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June 9, 2025"He looked at her with a slight enigmatical smile.
'You don't really believe in God, do you?' he said.
She leaned forward and took his hands in hers.
'I believe in this. That's enough for me. I don't want immortality - the idea bores me to tears. I don't know whether it all ends when we die - but I feel it does, and I certainly wish it does, and I certainly wish it does. Eternity is as impossible for me to understand as your miracles. We're born, we make love, and we die. It's not a bad life. Why make such a song and dance about it?'"
They got me with "a banned classic of modern Irish literature." Say less, honestly. I was promised "an erotic nightmare of Catholic longing, guilt, and desire" and it delivered. This book is smart and tackles big themes, but is also surprisingly propulsive, and a juicy, scandalous little story. I loved it so much. I just wanted to be in this story and didn't want to put it down. What a fun start to summer reading!
'You don't really believe in God, do you?' he said.
She leaned forward and took his hands in hers.
'I believe in this. That's enough for me. I don't want immortality - the idea bores me to tears. I don't know whether it all ends when we die - but I feel it does, and I certainly wish it does, and I certainly wish it does. Eternity is as impossible for me to understand as your miracles. We're born, we make love, and we die. It's not a bad life. Why make such a song and dance about it?'"
They got me with "a banned classic of modern Irish literature." Say less, honestly. I was promised "an erotic nightmare of Catholic longing, guilt, and desire" and it delivered. This book is smart and tackles big themes, but is also surprisingly propulsive, and a juicy, scandalous little story. I loved it so much. I just wanted to be in this story and didn't want to put it down. What a fun start to summer reading!
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