I Used To Take Five Or Six

The Rosary Was Said Every Evening. I Always Liked That Sentence About The Medieval Churches, That They Were The Bibles Of The Poor. The Church Was My First Book And I Would Think It Is Still My Most Important Book.

I Think My Mother Was Very Spiritual.

I Belong To The Middle Class That Grew Up Very Influenced By The Catholic Church. The People Of The Novel Are From A More Pagan And Practical World In Which The Christianity Is Just A Veneer.

Amongst Women Concentrated On The Family, And The New Book Concentrates On A Small Community. The Dominant Units In Irish Society Are The Family And The Locality. The Idea Was That The Whole World Would Grow Out From That Small Space.

We Absolutely Believed In Heaven And Hell, Purgatory, And Even Limbo. I Mean, They Were Actually Closer To Us Than Australia Or Canada, That They Were Real Places.