Aiming at Heaven, Getting the Earth : The English Catholic Novel Today

Argues that there is vitality in the English Catholic novel. This book analyses the fiction of four contemporary Catholic novelists Alice Thomas Ellis, David Lodge, Sara Maitland, and Piers Paul Read. It situates their work both within the tradition of the Catholic novel as it developed in France and England.

Although many literary critics assert that the Catholic novel is in decline, Aiming at Heaven, Getting the Earth: The English Catholic Novel Today argues that there is still vitality in the English Catholic novel at the beginning of the twenty-first century. Marian Crowe relates this fiction to recent developments in the post-Vatican II Church and elucidates intriguing possibilities for future Catholic fiction. In addition to discussing the theory and history of the Catholic novel, the book provides an in-depth study of four contemporary English Catholic novelists: Alice Thomas Ellis, David Lodge, Sara Maitland, and Piers Paul Read, who are among the most talented and original Catholic novelists writing in England today. Three novels by each writer are analyzed with particular attention to Catholic themes.Aiming at Heaven, Getting the Earth is of great interest to scholars as well as general readers in contemporary literature.