The Sign of the Cross: Travels in Catholic Europe

by Colm Tóibín

Book Overview

Toibin, a "collapsed" Catholic, offers an odyssey into his inner self as he reckons with the religious demons of his past. Here are the rituals, the pilgrimages, the shrines, the fanatics, the... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0679442030
• ISBN13: 9780679442035
• Release Date: September 1995
• Publisher: Pantheon
• Length: 296 Pages
• Weight: 0.95 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.8" x 1.0" x 5.5"

Customer Reviews

Fascinating

This was an amazing book. Full of interesting facts and details. It made me want to visit...well nearly all of the places described by the author. If you are interested in Catholicism or European culture and politics, I would strongly urge you to read this book.

A good read, and thought-provoking too

This is a great book to read while traveling (it just got me through a trip home on a weekend when winter storms had disrupted airline schedules throughout the entire U.S.!). The chapters are short and fairly self-contained, but each is well-written and engrossing. There's a lot of variety -- from fairly straightforward travelogues such as the accounts of the author's visits to Rome, to highly personal essays on his family and his belated coming to grips with his father's early death. And he's the only ex-Catholic author I've read who's accurately described that odd, characteristic combination of lack of belief in the Church's tenets with lingering reverence for all things Catholic: I'm a 'collapsed Catholic' myself, and I think he got it down exactly right. (Nostalgia for one's childhood is part of it, but it's certainly not ALL of it!) His discussions of Catholicism and the English are telling, and he makes some points about the Irish Catholic treatment of Protestants that most of us, raised as we are with a black-and-white (or, in this instance, orange-and-green!) view of the issue, have never considered. There's a lot here to think about as well as be entertained by, and I recommend the book without reservation.

Makes you want to follow the author's footsteps

Like all the best travel writing, The Sign of the Cross makes you want to visit the places Colm Toibin visits. He travels to out-of-the-way spots throughout Europe, usually during religious holidays. Toibin interacts with both government officials and ordinary people and evokes a feeling for the churches and festivals in a way that makes you wish you were tagging along with him. The book is a combination of travelogue, history, sociology, and personal reminiscence. Toibin is funny and a great prose stylist. You don't have to be religious to appreciate his story.