Losing One's Religion, An Early Call Out
The exciting Q's of next week's Q&A and a mention in The New Daily
Readings Launch
I’m thrilled to share that the brilliant Monica Dux will be launching Ghosts of the Orphanage next week at Readings, Carlton. Dux, an author, presenter, and a longtime columnist for The Age, regularly pulls off the hardest feat in writing—deeply thoughtful, intensely researched cultural observation that is also incredibly funny. Think David Sedaris or Jon Ronson, but funnier and more authentically emotional.
Dux’s recent book, Lapsed, about her reflections on a catholic childhood and her attempts to leave the Catholic Church is a trenchant, hilarious memoir and a sweeping historic analysis.
One US reader called the book “endearing and revelatory” and “a genuine literary treat.”
…a frank and winning autobiographical testament which pays tribute to a community of decent people dealing in their various ways with the entrenched depravity of a rich and powerful ecclesiastical corporation
Another US reader described it as “brilliantly written and very, very funny.”
…a friend assured me that it was hilariously funny. And it is, causing me to laugh out loud in many places. But not only is it funny, but it is exceptionally researched even on such arcane topics as the Church’s canon law and its theological contortions over sex… It was a book I found difficult to put down.
I urge you to listen to the Audible sample of Dux reading from Lapsed about the time she was cast as Jesus in the school passion play. Listen for the spontaneous liturgical dance moves, stay for the exegesis on ‘The Unlikely Adventures of Christ and Friends.’
Lapsed is available at Amazon.com in the US and at all bookstores in Australia.
Book here for the Readings launch with Monica Dux.
Excommunication in the 21st century
Here’s Dux in The Guardian on the maddening exercise of trying to leave the Catholic church.
If you Google “How do I quit the Catholic church?”, you’ll find a lot of chatter, mostly posted by angry, disaffected former Catholics. And it seems that most of them regard excommunication as the way to go. A reasonable assumption, given that excommunication is an incredibly ancient and dramatic concept, going right back to the start of the church, and evoking medieval trials, the Inquisition, and crimes that are an insult to God Himself.
Which sounds like just my kind of thing…
Read more here.
The New Daily Call Out
Ghosts of the Orphanage was recommended by The New Daily, along with Margaret Atwood’s Old Babes in the Wood and a biography, Tanya Plibersek: On Her Own Terms, from Margaret Simons — who is without doubt one of Australia’s best journalists.
Unboxing the Australian book
US schedule
