Night’s Bright Darkness by Sally Read, Ignatius Press, £14.50
The story of a person’s conversion is often inspiring, and the poet Sally Read’s account of her own dramatic change of heart and mind is no exception. A staunch atheist, feminist and believer in euthanasia and abortion, the author, who trained as a psychiatric nurse, related that after her father’s death when she was 26, she admitted to herself: “This is hell. I’m in hell.”
It took some time, a longing to write “one true poem”, research for a book on women’s sexual health and many conversations with an exiled Ukrainian priest whom she met in Italy, before the author had a life-changing experience in 2010 which made her desperate to become a Catholic. “After a lifetime of lacking Christ in the Eucharist, I could barely wait another day,” she writes. This was a huge, grace-filled volte-face for someone as prejudiced against the Church as Read admits she was.
