To The Last Page

Brian Moore is a difficult writer to pin down - and it's literally decades since the time I was reading him - but there are at least a few constants which you can easily associate with his Belfast, Northern Ireland background, his characters often struggling with Catholic guilt when confronted with events that challenge their beliefs in who they think they are. Those are more evident in his earlier books located in Ireland, but living in Canada his works gradually acquired a wider and less easily definable character (although I remember those themes still being to the forefront in Black Robe ), and a wider popular readership leading to a number of major film adaptations. One book which is harder to reconcile with anything else in his writing - other than the nature of writing itself - is The Great Victorian Collection . The premise clearly lays out what is in essence a very intriguing idea, but one you would think has limited scope to develop. Anthony Maloney, an assistant professo...