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A review by kimbofo
The Waking Of Willie Ryan by John Broderick
5.0
Back in 2012 I read John Broderick’s The Pilgrimage, an astonishing and shocking novel about sexual repression in 1950s Ireland, which has remained with me to this day.
Broderick’s later novel,The Waking of Willie Ryan, which was originally published in 1963, is just as memorable.
This story — of a man who escapes an asylum to confront the people who put him there — is a damning indictment of how easy it once was to remove troublesome people from society by merely labelling them “insane”. It’s also a horrifying expose of the Church’s cruelty towards homosexuals and the way in which it refuses to accept responsibility for past actions.
To read the rest of my review, please visit my blog.
Broderick’s later novel,The Waking of Willie Ryan, which was originally published in 1963, is just as memorable.
This story — of a man who escapes an asylum to confront the people who put him there — is a damning indictment of how easy it once was to remove troublesome people from society by merely labelling them “insane”. It’s also a horrifying expose of the Church’s cruelty towards homosexuals and the way in which it refuses to accept responsibility for past actions.
To read the rest of my review, please visit my blog.