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About The Mary Pages
Raised in an atheist household, Sally Read nevertheless saw images of the Blessed Virgin Mary from earliest childhood—and they remained with her in the most remarkable ways. Conscious of the conflict between her feminist values and what came to be a fascination with Marian art, Read—through tumultuous relationships, loneliness, and distant places—began a unique quest to discover the true essence of Mary.
These pages contain the strange, raw, and epiphany-filled stories that led to Read’s dramatic nine-month conversion from atheism to Catholicism. Focusing not only on Read’s life but also on the lives of others who, knowingly or unknowingly, encountered the Virgin, this literary memoir is a testimony of how a Mother patiently brought one child home to her Son—and slowly revealed her own heart.
Here’s What People Are Saying...
“This is a gorgeous, soul-stirring book. There is no sanctimony here—only evocative imagery and poetic prose that lays bare the terrain of a complicated, Mary-haunted, grace-ridden life. The Mary Pages is a work of art, an icon in words.”
– Abigail Favale, author of The Genesis of Gender and Professor of the Practice at McGrath Institute for Church Life, University of Notre Dame
“I am in awe at what Sally Read has given us in these pages. What an extraordinary journey she has been on, and she now takes us with her in her discovery—step by patient, even unsettling, step—to understanding the beauty and necessity of falling in love with the Mother of God. There’s humor, wit, honesty, vulnerability, poetry (yes!), and a profound understanding of Mary’s life entwined with God’s, and her radiant presence over the centuries, from Nazareth to Walsingham to Mexico City and a hundred other places. Reader, listen. You will come away changed, even transformed, by what you find in these pages.”
– Paul Mariani, University Professor of English Emeritus at Boston College
“The Mary Pages provides a unique tour through some of the most iconic images of the Blessed Virgin Mary, making them strikingly relevant to women of today. Sally Read’s moving memoir recounts the dilemmas and distractions of modern women, but also reveals her poignant game of hide-and-seek with the Mother of God through a series of works of art. As a poet who searches for meaning beyond the immediate, Sally Read helps the reader see that those faces of Mary—above altars, in museums, by bedsides—are calling to her children in whatever circumstances they may find themselves. A truly inspiring read.”
– Elizabeth Lev, art historian and author of How Catholic Art Saved the Faith
“‘If anyone is in Christ,’ writes St. Paul to the Corinthians, ‘he is a new creation.’ Through her search for some real Mary represented in art, Read examines her own life as a self-creation, seeking ‘liberation’ in a fallen and sordid world. What Mary, the ‘unsurpassed solely human icon,’ reveals to her is that her ‘body was made to be a piece of Eden.’ It is in recognizing in the Blessed Mother an image of what it is to be a ‘new creation’ that the writer finds her own soul luminously remade.”
– Sally Thomas, author of Works of Mercy
“Sally Read follows a winding path into the Church, led by the arresting beauty of Mary’s fiat, not a sanded-off, sentimental, safe kind of love. Read’s own prose mirrors the jarring loveliness of God’s invitation.”
– Leah Libresco Sargeant, author of Arriving at Amen: Seven Catholic Prayers That Even I Can Offer
Contents
Acknowledgments xi
A Note to the Reader xiii
Prelude: My First Marys 1
(My first Marys: La Madonna del Granduca by Raphael and
Madonna and Child with Two Angels by Fra Filippo Lippi)
Chapter One: New Eve 11
(In which Madonna and Child with Two Angels by
Fra Filippo Lippi comes with me)
Chapter Two: Tower 65
(In which Our Lady of Guadalupe, acheiropoieton, finds me)
Chapter Three: Mother 111
(In which La Pietà by Michelangelo teaches me)
Chapter Four: The Answering Call 163
(In which The Statue of Our Lady of Walsingham, anonymous,
helps me to an answer)
Notes 218
Works of Art 228
Bibliography 234
“I wondered, how can she be, simultaneously, the New Eve, the gate, the star, and also a tower? But I see now, looking back at myself as I blindly crossed that flat land, she is a tower. A tower has deep foundations, and it goes way up into the sky. It links earth and heaven. It’s a break in the earth’s horizontal narrative of despair. It’s the breath of the long-distance swimmer, the tether for the floating astronaut. When they call the Virgin a tower, what they’re saying is that she is a living prayer, rising up in the wilderness. In blazing sun, she offers the shade of God; in storms, she gives shelter.”
— Sally Read, The Mary Pages
About the Author
About the Author
Sally Read is an award-winning poet and editor of 100 Great Catholic Poems. Her first collection since her conversion from atheism to Catholicism, Dawn of this Hunger, was the fruit of her ten-year tenure as poet in residence at the Hermitage of the Three Holy Hierarchs. Sally’s poetry has been recorded for the UK’s Poetry Archive, and her writing, in both poetry and prose, has appeared in numerous publications and anthologies, including The Times Literary Supplement, The Picador Book of Love Poems, and Forward’s Poems of the Decade. Her poetry has also been featured on BBC Radio, and episodes of her Radio Maria England show, “Poetry for the Season,” are available on Spotify.
Since her conversion, Sally has written lyrics for the sacred music of Paul Flynn, and their songs have been performed by the Palestrina and Trinity College Chapel Choirs in Dublin. Sally has also written two books of nonfiction, Night's Bright Darkness and Annunciation: A Call to Faith in a Broken World, the latter of which was the subject of a short film by Norman Servais for EWTN Great Britain. Sally’s work has been translated in five languages.
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