Something in the Head: The Life and Work of John Broderick

This is the first full biography of author John Broderick (1927-89) whose powerful Balzacian novels of life in the Irish midlands, from The Pilgrimage (1961) to An Apology for Roses (1973) and The Trials of Father Dillingham (1975) depict Irish sexuality and Catholicism in a series of pungent tableaux and portraits drawn from vivid but entrapped lives. His own bourgeois roots, solitary childhood, enveloping mother, homosexuality and alcoholism fuelled his fictions, which were in turn enlarged by his love of France and its literature. Two of John Broderick's novels, The Pilgrimage and the Waking of Willie Ryan are also available from Dufour. (see page 7)