The Pilgrimage

First published in 1961 and banned by Ireland’s censorship board, this provocative novel from Broderick (The Flood), who died in 1989, explores extramarital desire under the iron grip of Catholicism. Julia Glynn, trapped in her unhappy marriage to Michael, who is bedridden with arthritis, enters into an affair with Michael’s nephew and doctor, Jim. Complicating this delicate geometry is Michael’s faithful manservant, Stephen, who treats Julia with bare civility. Julia regularly compares her stale marriage to the passion she shared with a former lover, whose abrupt abandonment of her remains a source of pain. Amping up the household tension is a series of anonymous letters that Julia receives, castigating her for the affair with Jim and threatening to expose her. Meanwhile, Michael is intensely focused on a planned pilgrimage to Lourdes, which he hopes will cure him. As the novel teeters tantalizingly between deadpan satire and claustrophobic intensity, the journey to Lourdes becomes as chimerical as the anticipated move to Moscow in Chekhov’s Three Sisters. Broderick’s biting tale has plenty of heat and heart. (Mar.)