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A review by kitnotmarlowe
Afterlives of the Saints by Colin Dickey
dark
informative
mysterious
slow-paced
3.5
surprised that this wasn't an automatic 5-star considering ghostland is one of my favourite books in the world, and considering that when i was forced to go to mass as a kid i would obsessively read my illustrated book of saints instead of paying attention.
the prologue and first chapter were the strongest, imo. dickey's writing is at its most focused, his connections the strongest. he writes of the saints trying to get around of and out of their bodies, because one becomes a saint only in death, only in heaven. as the book progresses, the topics covered become more outlandish--the chapter on st. anthony spends an awful lot of time discussing the historical dangers of masturbation, for example--and they only land half the time. some work, like the obvious but perhaps overlooked connection between st. george and english colonialism + the conquest of wales, others, like st. anthony, and the chapter exploring spontaneous human combustion through st. barbara left me with a resounding feeling of "hm....okay, so what?"
most of my frustrations lie with the depictions of the figures i was most familiar with--st teresa of ávila, st. sebastian, st. lucy, and margery of kempe--their chapters were underwhelming because of my previous knowledge. for example, the chapter on teresa makes no mention of her torture by spanish inquisition, and of how dangerous it was to be a female mystic in the 16th century, and how teresa survived by removing herself from her own femininity. instead, the chapter talks about how much she read and wrote. additionally, it would have been interesting if dickey had explored some more modern saints from the 19th and 20th centuries to examine where notions of sainthood fit into a rapidly industrializing world.
"But that is what it means to love a divinity: to crave death, to want to die daily, to reject this world in favour of the promise of another."
the prologue and first chapter were the strongest, imo. dickey's writing is at its most focused, his connections the strongest. he writes of the saints trying to get around of and out of their bodies, because one becomes a saint only in death, only in heaven. as the book progresses, the topics covered become more outlandish--the chapter on st. anthony spends an awful lot of time discussing the historical dangers of masturbation, for example--and they only land half the time. some work, like the obvious but perhaps overlooked connection between st. george and english colonialism + the conquest of wales, others, like st. anthony, and the chapter exploring spontaneous human combustion through st. barbara left me with a resounding feeling of "hm....okay, so what?"
most of my frustrations lie with the depictions of the figures i was most familiar with--st teresa of ávila, st. sebastian, st. lucy, and margery of kempe--their chapters were underwhelming because of my previous knowledge. for example, the chapter on teresa makes no mention of her torture by spanish inquisition, and of how dangerous it was to be a female mystic in the 16th century, and how teresa survived by removing herself from her own femininity. instead, the chapter talks about how much she read and wrote. additionally, it would have been interesting if dickey had explored some more modern saints from the 19th and 20th centuries to examine where notions of sainthood fit into a rapidly industrializing world.
"But that is what it means to love a divinity: to crave death, to want to die daily, to reject this world in favour of the promise of another."