What do you think?
Rate this book
The Sign of the Cross: Travels in Catholic Europe
Colm Tóibín is one of Irelands most distinguished young writers; he is also a lapsed Catholic. Yet over a succession of Holy Weeks, Tóibín found himself travelling to places where Catholicism still possesses mystery and power, from Poland to Lithuania, from Lourdes to Santiago, and from Croatia to Ireland. And in seeing how the faith persisted in other peoples lives, he discovered how it still resonated in his own. In this beautifully observed work of travel writing and spiritual reportage, Tóibín turns his eye on Catholicisms rituals. He shows how it ripples outward into the history and politics of homelands. Yet Tóibín also encounters the cross-shaped wound that lies at his own centerand it is his unflinching examination of that wound that makes The Sign of the Cross as moving as it is perceptive and urbane.
256 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 1994
25 people are currently reading
548 people want to read
About the author
Colm Tóibín
235 books5,547 followersColm Tóibín FRSL, is an Irish novelist, short story writer, essayist, playwright, journalist, critic, and poet. Tóibín is currently Irene and Sidney B. Silverman Professor of the Humanities at Columbia University in Manhattan and succeeded Martin Amis as professor of creative writing at the University of Manchester.
Ratings & Reviews
Friends & Following
Create a free account to discover what your friends think of this book!
Community Reviews
Displaying 1 - 30 of 42 reviews
June 17, 2018
Three and half stars.
For the flowing and clear language, I could give five stars.
Even the content was interesting. It would have received more stars had I not been a Catholic. Not that Toibin is anti-Catholic in his writing. He was born and brought up in an Irish Catholic family. Later he became a rationalist. This book is written by Toibin, the rationalist. Unlike others he out rightly does not reject and shun all that is Catholic. In fact, at times he is sympathetic towards Catholic practices. But being a rationalist he always sought for the reasons behind the practices. He did not believe in Mystery. And it is where I felt let down by Toibin.
For instance, the attraction of a solemn mass for the Catholic crowd is equated with a theatrical performance or a bloody sport (Bull fight in Spain). In Poland, Church was equated with Nation and that is why the Catholic Church had such a sway over the Polish crowd. He might be having a reason. But he fails to see that beyond such reasoning there is still a space, the mysterious space, the space of the faith.
Otherwise, it makes a lovely reading.
For the flowing and clear language, I could give five stars.
Even the content was interesting. It would have received more stars had I not been a Catholic. Not that Toibin is anti-Catholic in his writing. He was born and brought up in an Irish Catholic family. Later he became a rationalist. This book is written by Toibin, the rationalist. Unlike others he out rightly does not reject and shun all that is Catholic. In fact, at times he is sympathetic towards Catholic practices. But being a rationalist he always sought for the reasons behind the practices. He did not believe in Mystery. And it is where I felt let down by Toibin.
For instance, the attraction of a solemn mass for the Catholic crowd is equated with a theatrical performance or a bloody sport (Bull fight in Spain). In Poland, Church was equated with Nation and that is why the Catholic Church had such a sway over the Polish crowd. He might be having a reason. But he fails to see that beyond such reasoning there is still a space, the mysterious space, the space of the faith.
Otherwise, it makes a lovely reading.
September 26, 2025
Tóbín's book began as a series of essays, at least some of which appeared in periodicals. What was reportage in the 1990s is now almost only of historical interest. When he travelled, mostly through central and southern Europe, the Bosnian War was raging and John Paul II was still in the middle of his papacy. As a matter of clarification, I am not Catholic, although I spent 34 years on the faculty of a Catholic university. I enjoy travel books and like Tóbín's writing, otherwise I might not have picked this up.
The book is by turns travelogue and descriptions of churches, pilgrimage sites, and Catholic life in various parts of Europe. Tóbín makes it clear he is no longer a believer, although he remains firmly rooted in the culture of his Irish Catholic upbringing. In some ways, it is more about his relationship with Catholicism than about Catholicism. He begins and ends with Enniscorthy Cathedral in Ireland, his family parish where he was raised. He visits pilgrimage sites: Lourdes, the Black Madonna, Medjugorje. He attends Holy Week services in various cities. In between, he takes planes, trains, and automobiles from one place to another. He haunts local bars and interviews a lot of people. One of the more entertaining chapters is his "pilgrimage" to Compostela: he starts in mid-course, cheats by taking taxis, and seems a lot more focused on his next meal than his pilgrimage. At one inn he comes across the comic novelist David Lodge and a BBC film crew. Lodge is one of the blurbers on the back of my copy.
His chapters on the Baltics, Croatia, and Slovenia are the most interesting, chiefly as a record of those countries in that era. Some chapters are primarily of interest for the people he interviews. In "England, Their England" there are several pages on his conversation with Terry Eagleton, olim Oxford don, which makes a fascinating appendage to Eagleton's memoirs, The Gatekeeper.
In the end, I found the book less than the sum of its parts. Much of it is now badly dated. I can't say that I learned much about Catholicism that I didn't already know. But there are still some lovely bits of travel writing. A few passages:
The cold was new to me, even though I had come from Dublin. It was sharper, fiercer, more exact than the Irish cold. [passage from Stockholm to Tallinn]
The city centre appeared untouched by Soviet architecture or even by the nineteenth century. The main square was straight out of a Dürer woodcut. There were hardly any cars and no car parks; just a few shoppers wandering around, it was like a vast marketplace. Each building in the square was in a different style. [Tallinn]
It was not there. The city he remembered no longer existed. [Czeslaw Milocz's Wilno]
It was years since I had read that story and I wondered that night as I walked back to the hotel through the empty streets if I would not be better at home in Dublin reading, turning a page just now in a lamp-lit room, rather than hanging around a strange city with my mind full of half-baked quotations. [Venice, on the way to Croatia]
At times that night the scene was like something out of a dream. The sky was clear and the moon could be seen reflected in the sea below us. The road still twisted along the coast. And the few times I could see for miles ahead, I could make out the shape of queues of lorries in the moonlight. [on the bus from Zagreb to Medjugorje]
It was a city which had been constructed for the convenience of its citizens rather than as a way of establishing the authority of its rulers or its deities. [Ljubljana]
And a note on the Latin. Tóbín quotes a number of snatches from the liturgy in Latin. Having grown up Irish Catholic in the early sixties, he gets most of it right. But twice in this book I saw "Lumens Christi." Really? How could he get that wrong?
The book is by turns travelogue and descriptions of churches, pilgrimage sites, and Catholic life in various parts of Europe. Tóbín makes it clear he is no longer a believer, although he remains firmly rooted in the culture of his Irish Catholic upbringing. In some ways, it is more about his relationship with Catholicism than about Catholicism. He begins and ends with Enniscorthy Cathedral in Ireland, his family parish where he was raised. He visits pilgrimage sites: Lourdes, the Black Madonna, Medjugorje. He attends Holy Week services in various cities. In between, he takes planes, trains, and automobiles from one place to another. He haunts local bars and interviews a lot of people. One of the more entertaining chapters is his "pilgrimage" to Compostela: he starts in mid-course, cheats by taking taxis, and seems a lot more focused on his next meal than his pilgrimage. At one inn he comes across the comic novelist David Lodge and a BBC film crew. Lodge is one of the blurbers on the back of my copy.
His chapters on the Baltics, Croatia, and Slovenia are the most interesting, chiefly as a record of those countries in that era. Some chapters are primarily of interest for the people he interviews. In "England, Their England" there are several pages on his conversation with Terry Eagleton, olim Oxford don, which makes a fascinating appendage to Eagleton's memoirs, The Gatekeeper.
In the end, I found the book less than the sum of its parts. Much of it is now badly dated. I can't say that I learned much about Catholicism that I didn't already know. But there are still some lovely bits of travel writing. A few passages:
The cold was new to me, even though I had come from Dublin. It was sharper, fiercer, more exact than the Irish cold. [passage from Stockholm to Tallinn]
The city centre appeared untouched by Soviet architecture or even by the nineteenth century. The main square was straight out of a Dürer woodcut. There were hardly any cars and no car parks; just a few shoppers wandering around, it was like a vast marketplace. Each building in the square was in a different style. [Tallinn]
It was not there. The city he remembered no longer existed. [Czeslaw Milocz's Wilno]
It was years since I had read that story and I wondered that night as I walked back to the hotel through the empty streets if I would not be better at home in Dublin reading, turning a page just now in a lamp-lit room, rather than hanging around a strange city with my mind full of half-baked quotations. [Venice, on the way to Croatia]
At times that night the scene was like something out of a dream. The sky was clear and the moon could be seen reflected in the sea below us. The road still twisted along the coast. And the few times I could see for miles ahead, I could make out the shape of queues of lorries in the moonlight. [on the bus from Zagreb to Medjugorje]
It was a city which had been constructed for the convenience of its citizens rather than as a way of establishing the authority of its rulers or its deities. [Ljubljana]
And a note on the Latin. Tóbín quotes a number of snatches from the liturgy in Latin. Having grown up Irish Catholic in the early sixties, he gets most of it right. But twice in this book I saw "Lumens Christi." Really? How could he get that wrong?
October 13, 2025
I found this book dated, boring and insubstantial - just being born catholic doesn't mean you have anything to say on catholic Europe - Toibin barely seems to know the basics of the Catholic faith and has absolutely no understanding of it place or role at the time the book was written.
A complete waste of time.
A complete waste of time.
June 22, 2024
This book focuses on the author's travels around Europe, in the early 1990s, and his observations of Holy Week celebrations by different cultures. He visits Poland, Seville, Bavaria, Rome, Lithuania, Estonia and the Balkans and highlights any specifics in each of those places. He attempts to analyse a state of catholic faith and discusses it with the local intellectuals. Unfortunately, the whole story is a bit dated as a lot has changed in the last thirty years. Also, the author's relation of his psychiatric therapy appears completely irrational and hardly relevant to the whole story.
February 28, 2020
My second Tóibín, after listening to him read his Mad, Bad, Dangerous to Know: The Fathers of Wilde, Yeats and Joyce in November. I really like his literary (and physical) voice.
March 12, 2024
Yeah, calling it, take this review with a grain of salt because I did not finish.
There are moments of goodness when he dips more into memoir and reflection, and transcends travel writing into poetic descriptions of time and place, but those are few and far between.
It's a lot of simply stating Catholic buildings he saw and Catholic people who spoke too. It reads as a list of things he did in Catholic places.
There are moments where he puts on his reporter hat, and so at times it is an interesting snapshot of what religion in Eastern Europe was like just after the iron curtain fell, but not a very interesting snap shot.
Unless you're, I don't know, in a grad class about religion in Europe in the 90s, there's no reason to read this book.
There are moments of goodness when he dips more into memoir and reflection, and transcends travel writing into poetic descriptions of time and place, but those are few and far between.
It's a lot of simply stating Catholic buildings he saw and Catholic people who spoke too. It reads as a list of things he did in Catholic places.
There are moments where he puts on his reporter hat, and so at times it is an interesting snapshot of what religion in Eastern Europe was like just after the iron curtain fell, but not a very interesting snap shot.
Unless you're, I don't know, in a grad class about religion in Europe in the 90s, there's no reason to read this book.
September 14, 2011
Irish Catholic journalist Colm Toibin journeyed throughout Catholic Europe during the first half of the 1900s to report on the various manifestations of this religion to be found there. In so doing he provides us with a series of vignettes dealing with this question, including some precise descriptions and observations, and introducing us to some fascinating characters along the way.
The writing is pellucid: clear and transparent, with a minimum of literary flourishes. The effect is one of directness and honesty which I consider the ideal of journalistic writing of this type. Toibin, of course, has gone on to become one of Ireland's most notable authors (his 'The Master' is a classic case in point).
How one reacts to all this is a moot point: essentially it is left up to the reader to make up his or her own mind. To me, so many of the different 'types' of Catholicism speaks of a lack of cohesion in what is passed on by the Vatican as "Catholicism", a word which means 'universal'; in practice, the adherents in the various countries visited all seem to have their their own peculiar ways of showing their faith, some of them bordering on superstitious rites and activities which obviously have nothing 'universal' about them. It would be a mistake to think that Toibin is condemnatory in any way: far from it. He is able to present many poignant descriptions, usually linked to a person's individual faith, represented in that person's ritualised activity. Within this, one can ask: which is the 'true' Catholic? Is one type of Catholicism better than others? What does one group's 'antipathy' to another group signify, if anything? In all of this, there is a sense of personal individualised faith which seems more intense than anything grandly and ostentatiously 'Catholic'; but there is also a sense that it is a fading faith… And this is well before all the scandals that are to come.
What we have here is a wonderful time-capsule into a Catholic Europe which is already partially on the way out — a more secularised Europe will emerge which is perhaps far more cynical and suspicious of ultra-conservative Vatican polity, but which will continue to use 'national' and 'tribal' rituals which, while 'deriving' from some concept of universal Catholicism, in almost all cases have nothing whatever to do with the core elements of true Christianity.
The writing is pellucid: clear and transparent, with a minimum of literary flourishes. The effect is one of directness and honesty which I consider the ideal of journalistic writing of this type. Toibin, of course, has gone on to become one of Ireland's most notable authors (his 'The Master' is a classic case in point).
How one reacts to all this is a moot point: essentially it is left up to the reader to make up his or her own mind. To me, so many of the different 'types' of Catholicism speaks of a lack of cohesion in what is passed on by the Vatican as "Catholicism", a word which means 'universal'; in practice, the adherents in the various countries visited all seem to have their their own peculiar ways of showing their faith, some of them bordering on superstitious rites and activities which obviously have nothing 'universal' about them. It would be a mistake to think that Toibin is condemnatory in any way: far from it. He is able to present many poignant descriptions, usually linked to a person's individual faith, represented in that person's ritualised activity. Within this, one can ask: which is the 'true' Catholic? Is one type of Catholicism better than others? What does one group's 'antipathy' to another group signify, if anything? In all of this, there is a sense of personal individualised faith which seems more intense than anything grandly and ostentatiously 'Catholic'; but there is also a sense that it is a fading faith… And this is well before all the scandals that are to come.
What we have here is a wonderful time-capsule into a Catholic Europe which is already partially on the way out — a more secularised Europe will emerge which is perhaps far more cynical and suspicious of ultra-conservative Vatican polity, but which will continue to use 'national' and 'tribal' rituals which, while 'deriving' from some concept of universal Catholicism, in almost all cases have nothing whatever to do with the core elements of true Christianity.
June 20, 2017
This was an interesting collection of essays based on Toibin's travels through Catholic Europe in the early 90's. He captures the various traditions and idiosyncrasies in how Catholicism is practiced in various European countries and, inevitably, compares it to his own upbringing in Enniscrothy Cathedral. Having read the book 25 years after it was first published it is interesting to see that many of his observations about the enthusiasm of the young and the fervent belief of the young has not continued in Europe where, many say, we are now in a post Christian age. Tobin makes many good observations, but the book fails in that many of the essays spend too much time focusing on the quotidian travails he encounters in his low budget travels. The book is more about his travels than Catholicism. He also spends very little time describing encounters with the worshippers but rather most of his time is with intellectuals ruminating on Catholicism, many of whom are quite skeptical of it. Finally, this book has to be read in the context of the collapse of the Berlin Wall and the election of Pope John Paul II. So much of Catholic Europe reacted to the fall of communism and a new freedom to practice one's religion.
While Tobin is a gifted writer, he did not provide any keen insight into Catholicism and why it failed/succeeded in Europe.
While Tobin is a gifted writer, he did not provide any keen insight into Catholicism and why it failed/succeeded in Europe.
September 24, 2013
The author, whose fiction I love, left me unmoved with this series of essays recounting visits he made to various spots around Catholic Europe. It had interesting moments (his experience in a Protestant pub in Northern Ireland, for instance, and his description of his experience of group therapy), but for most of it he was just too detached and distant from the people whose religious experiences he, a lapsed Catholic, felt drawn to try to understand. How can you expect to understand the mentality of those who walk the way of Santiago de Compostela if you don't, well, walk it (and for more than a couple of days)? It also surprised me that he didn't talk to more ordinary people. Sure, he had appointments in some spots with professors, priests and other official types, but again, for a writer and journalist, he seemed almost shy with others. An interesting idea, but a bit of a disappointment in the execution.
June 16, 2013
I loved Colm Toibin' Blackwater Lightship as I did not some other of his fiction and I loved this also. It was particularly interesting to read this close after Macfarlane's The Old Ways. Macfarlane's prose is lush, full of wonder and joy at what he discovers tracing ancient paths. The kind of writing that makes me, well, happy. In Sign of the Cross, Toibin travels with a different purpose and his writing is not about the perfect simile but about letting the reader come to conclusions about the people and practices he meets. His writing, therefore, is more subtle in the best sense. These essays are over twenty years old now and it would be interesting to read at least one "return" essay. However, it is clear, at least to me, that we should be reminded as in essays like these of the hypocrisy that burdens religions who preach peace and also fully participate in breaking it.
July 23, 2011
I find books on Catholic Europe to be very interesting. The descriptions of the different countries and their reaction to the Catholic faith was fascinating. I especially enjoyed the sections on the former Soviet block countries where Catholics had been persecuted. This is well written and interesting diary of the authors travels. It made me want to visit some of the place I had not seen yet and appreciate some of the places I had already been. Overall, this is an interesting read and I went through it fairly quickly.
September 21, 2013
I was drawn to this book as I have yet to explore Eastern Europe and was intruded to see Europe thought the particular lens of Catholicism.
Unfortunately I had not realised that the writer as an author had contacts with other writers and journalists in many countries, and so rather than a trip round Europe this was a series of interviews with intellectuals.
Not what I was expecting at all and therefore rather disappointing
Unfortunately I had not realised that the writer as an author had contacts with other writers and journalists in many countries, and so rather than a trip round Europe this was a series of interviews with intellectuals.
Not what I was expecting at all and therefore rather disappointing
October 22, 2017
I really enjoyed Toibins writing style - I was expecting to be bored, but his language is very descriptive - almost emotive. I made it though a few chapters, but then realised that the tone was getting rather monotonic, and there was not really a theme which I could follow. I guess if I persisted then I might be rewarded with some feeling of completion at the end. However, I could not be persuaded to put in the effort due to the language alone.
June 15, 2012
A charming little book that is sure to be Appreciated by any fan of travelogues--especially as the author is refreshingly always on the way to a bar or in search of clean white sheets to sleep on--or anyone with a passing interest in the variability of Catholic practice.
March 18, 2018
Lent is a perfect time to read this book about pilgrimage and faith and the Church. Though it is several years old, the descriptions of churches, countrysides, and Catholicism now and forever are as universal as goth. Great travel book..
May 11, 2018
Took my a while to get into, as it's so different from Tóibín's other work. But some of the later chapters are amazing - on walking the compostela is hilarious, on the Balkans is insightful and on the UK fascinating.
October 12, 2009
I loved this book. It was his account of travelling through Catholic Europe and his experiences with different expressions of Catholicism in each country visited.
December 31, 2010
Colm Toibin has frank discussions about the Catholic religion as he travels to various countries in Europe.
January 20, 2011
my first time reading toibin's nonfiction (aside from short articles and essays), and loving it.
April 13, 2011
I didn't expect this to be all that interesting, but I found a lot of it just fascinating. Because I was reading it on my trip to Ireland, I kept feeling like I was on some sort of pilgrimage.
February 22, 2012
It probably says a lot that I laughed aloud at the Lutheran bits more than anything.
Seriously, though - I was in the mood for some reasonably light, reasonably heavy essays. These were perfect.
Seriously, though - I was in the mood for some reasonably light, reasonably heavy essays. These were perfect.
August 12, 2013
Couldn't finish it, interesting but ultimately not for the atheist!
October 12, 2014
Interesting to see how Catholicism is lived in different parts of Europe and how it shapes (or not) different national identities.
April 24, 2018
I registered a book at BookCrossing.com!
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/13806689
http://www.BookCrossing.com/journal/13806689
April 15, 2023
La edición que tengo de este libro es de Anaya & Mario Muchnik, traducida por María Isabel Butler de Foley y publicado en 1996. Es una pequeña joya, que aparentemente no llegó a ser tan popular como para tener su propia entrada en GoodReads; yo la encontré en algún puesto de libros viejos, que no usados. Una pena, porque el libro es literatura de viajes que mezcla el aspecto geográfico con el espiritual: Colm Tóibín visita lugares señeros de la cristiandad en Europa, pero en realidad lo que va buscando es su propia infancia y su propia cultura de católico irlandés. Empieza y termina en ese lugar físico y temporal, una misa en su ciudad natal de Enniscorthy, pero pasa por lugares de apariciones como Lourdes, los países recién salidos del comunismo como Polonia y Lituania, y por la Sicilia post-mafia.
En sus viajes y sensaciones reconozco las mías propias: también me aburrí en misas de mi juvenud, y estuve en Czestochowa un día de la Virgen que me provocó más espanto por las multitudes que despertar espiritual, y donde recuerdo que, en el bar del hotel donde nos alojamos, no tenían leche esa noche. En el mismo viaje, llegamos a Jasna Gora, la montaña negra, y mi hermano y yo fuimos los únicos que nos bajamos del autobús, para avanzar poco en la oscuridad sólo iluminada por algunas velas, y el suelo húmedo. No recuerdo mucho más; pero también estuve en Lourdes, porque durante una época los únicos viajes aparentemente legítimos eran aquellos etiquetados como “peregrinaciones”.
La religión siempre ha estado asociada a los viajes, y en este libro Colm Tòibìn los mezcla de forma magistral. Una buena lectura, si es que puedes encontrarlo.
En sus viajes y sensaciones reconozco las mías propias: también me aburrí en misas de mi juvenud, y estuve en Czestochowa un día de la Virgen que me provocó más espanto por las multitudes que despertar espiritual, y donde recuerdo que, en el bar del hotel donde nos alojamos, no tenían leche esa noche. En el mismo viaje, llegamos a Jasna Gora, la montaña negra, y mi hermano y yo fuimos los únicos que nos bajamos del autobús, para avanzar poco en la oscuridad sólo iluminada por algunas velas, y el suelo húmedo. No recuerdo mucho más; pero también estuve en Lourdes, porque durante una época los únicos viajes aparentemente legítimos eran aquellos etiquetados como “peregrinaciones”.
La religión siempre ha estado asociada a los viajes, y en este libro Colm Tòibìn los mezcla de forma magistral. Una buena lectura, si es que puedes encontrarlo.
March 12, 2020
One of those odd books you come across in that interesting used book store! I love real travel books, from the point of view of the traveler - usually more gritty and personal, not about good restaurants. This is an example. Colm Tóibín set himself a task, almost an assignment - to spend Easter weekend over a few years in the 1990s in Catholic areas of Europe. Raised a Catholic in Ireland, but a non-believer, he set out to explore what it meant to be Catholic, and to believe. He went on pilgrimages, including the famous Camino de Santiago, and was often affected by the fervor of others. He gets in close to papal visits because of his press credentials and describes the extreme strangeness and power of the experience. He journeys to areas newly freed from the Soviet Union and explores what it meant in political terms to be Catholic there. He does plenty of drinking, and seems to search out company! Tóibín ends the book in the cathedral of his own hometown. Overall, an interesting book but a bit dry. It felt like notes for something else - as I'm sure it was. The novels I've read of his ("Nora Webster" "House of Names") have a sense of space and realness that is quite extraordinary, and must come from this kind of constant, detailed, "in the field" research and thought. Next up, I think I'll read "The Testament of Mary" - or maybe listen to the audio book, which is read by Meryl Streep :)
December 29, 2020
I don’t know what I expected from this book. I was mainly curious. But, well….
It was written in 1994. In the early 90s, the author travelled to several European countries, often during the Easter weekend, to witness Catholic processions and interview people (mostly intellectuals) who reflect on national and religious sentiments.
On the one hand, the book is obviously quite dated. However, it can be read as an interesting time capsule. You find out about several Eastern European countries shortly after the fall of the Iron Curtain. I have a very limited knowledge of those countries to the east, so it was quite edifying, for example, to read about the role of Croatia or Slovakia during WW2 and its aftermath. However, his observations on the English- and German-speaking countries, which I know more about, left a more lasting impression on me.
Tóibín, himself a non-practicing Irish Catholic, merely describes, yet chooses to refrain from taking any person standpoint. In the same vein, his writing style is very sober and bare.
Maybe I’m wrong, and travel literature is not supposed to be analytical. Yet, I’d say that even though the book definitely had its moments, the writing style was altogether too distant and weakly conclusive.
It was written in 1994. In the early 90s, the author travelled to several European countries, often during the Easter weekend, to witness Catholic processions and interview people (mostly intellectuals) who reflect on national and religious sentiments.
On the one hand, the book is obviously quite dated. However, it can be read as an interesting time capsule. You find out about several Eastern European countries shortly after the fall of the Iron Curtain. I have a very limited knowledge of those countries to the east, so it was quite edifying, for example, to read about the role of Croatia or Slovakia during WW2 and its aftermath. However, his observations on the English- and German-speaking countries, which I know more about, left a more lasting impression on me.
Tóibín, himself a non-practicing Irish Catholic, merely describes, yet chooses to refrain from taking any person standpoint. In the same vein, his writing style is very sober and bare.
Maybe I’m wrong, and travel literature is not supposed to be analytical. Yet, I’d say that even though the book definitely had its moments, the writing style was altogether too distant and weakly conclusive.
August 5, 2022
I’m at a loss to understand why someone who is a lapsed Catholic (he tells us this 3/4 of the way through the book) would want to write a book about travels in Catholic Europe.
This could have been a very interesting book but instead the author walks around with a big hammer and anything Catholic or innocent or good becomes a nail. Personally, I feel he has some kind of sin he doesn’t want to let go of and instead of blaming himself, he blames the church.
He found negatives especially in joyful things, like nuns outside of Auschwitz, Eucharistic processions, seminarians hoping for a word from the blessed Mother at Medjugorie. The last was especially rude.
This book was written over 20 years ago. The author already seemed old and cranky but he is only 67 years old today. Hopefully he has found some peace in his life.
Don’t waste your time on the book, though. It is now dated and sadly frustrating.
This could have been a very interesting book but instead the author walks around with a big hammer and anything Catholic or innocent or good becomes a nail. Personally, I feel he has some kind of sin he doesn’t want to let go of and instead of blaming himself, he blames the church.
He found negatives especially in joyful things, like nuns outside of Auschwitz, Eucharistic processions, seminarians hoping for a word from the blessed Mother at Medjugorie. The last was especially rude.
This book was written over 20 years ago. The author already seemed old and cranky but he is only 67 years old today. Hopefully he has found some peace in his life.
Don’t waste your time on the book, though. It is now dated and sadly frustrating.
December 23, 2025
Toibín's strengths as a writer of fiction, namely his deep emotionality and clear, rich style, translate directly to his non-fiction. Another reviewer picked out some wonderful quotes which exemplify this - one description of a town as a Durer wood-block picture, another snippet where the author wonders whether he ought to have remained in Dublin reading his book rather than embark on this journey. However, analytical insight is not Toibín's forté and this detracts from the strength of his non-fiction. The reader is watches as Toibín travels through Catholic Europe but is not led, mentored or guided - we merely spectate pleasantly.
March 14, 2022
This book was written between 1990 and 1994 and is a mixture of autobiography travelogue and journalism, the latter being somewhat political.
The book is well written and mostly informative. I would have given 5 stars but f for the fact that the politics side of the journey was overdone - I would have prefered to read more about the churches/religous asp[ects of the countries visited
.Nevertheless an interesting read.
The book is well written and mostly informative. I would have given 5 stars but f for the fact that the politics side of the journey was overdone - I would have prefered to read more about the churches/religous asp[ects of the countries visited
.Nevertheless an interesting read.
Displaying 1 - 30 of 42 reviews