Holy Places: How Pilgrimage Changed the World by Kathryn Hurlock (Profile, £22)
The history of pilgrimage is examined in 19 sacred sites and their role discussed through a consideration of how these journeys shaped society, culture and politics, managing to thrive into the 21st century. Some pilgrimages have endured for thousands of years, and while many are still undertaken to promote faith, others are completed for contemplation or wellbeing.
The author follows a trail from remote islands to teeming capital cities, writing about locations such as Mecca, Buenos Aires and Tai Shan in China. Her European itinerary includes Lourdes, Rome, Istanbul and Iona, as well as Santiago de Compostela, which the author suggests has become the model pilgrimage to which all others are compared. Modern historians and anthropologists have called this the ‘Caminoisation’ of pilgrimage. Paul Clements
Toothpull of St Dunstan by Keith Davey (AAAARGH! Press, £11.99)
Kevin Davey’s third novel is narrated by Toothpull, a dentist practising for 700 years in a life of “Abrahamic persistence”. He tends to “teeth weakened by diseases, occlusions, accidents and blows” at St Dunstan’s near Canterbury.
Toothpull learns to use the crude tools of his brutal trade – a pelican for extractions and poppies for anaesthetic – at a time when teeth were the sixth most common cause of death. Told as a series of encounters, his customers include a man with two mouths and the talking severed head of Sir Thomas More.
Heavily seasoned with wordplay, allusions and in-jokes, the prose is often poetic: “Dark dwellings, impasto, rooves looming, eaves leaking shadow.” A clever, inventive novel,
brimming with wild energy and originality. Rónán Hession
Poor Ghost by Gabriel Flynn (Sceptre, £20)
Luca has failed his PhD. He has failed to respond to the emails inviting him to discuss this failure. He has failed to address these feelings with a budding paramour from whose house he absconds in the middle of the night. Now he is back in his hometown of Manchester to process it all. Or better yet, distract himself with someone else’s struggles by becoming a ghostwriter.
Flynn’s debut literary novel is not un-put-downable, but certainly pick-up-able. The Mancunian offers an engaging reading experience through agile prose and a strong narrative voice. However, it is this same narrative voice that presents a challenge.
With such seeping self-hatred, how is the reader to feel? Sympathetic, accepting, admiring, pitying, frustrated? I found myself veering towards the latter, but for some, nihilism may be more of a turn-on. Brigid O’Dea
