


Two decades ago, Sally Read was an award-winning poet, an outspoken feminist as well as a vehemently anti-Catholic atheist. Then, unexpectedly, in 2010, she converted to Catholicism. Subsequently, six years later, she published her acclaimed spiritual memoir about that faith journey: Night’s Bright Darkness: A Modern Conversion Story. She has since published books on theology and poetry.
Her latest book published by Word on Fire is The Mary Pages: An Atheist’s Journey to the Mother of God.
Although raised in an atheist household, as a child she saw images of the Blessed Virgin Mary — and these were to remain with her, sometimes in the most remarkable ways. Conscious of the conflict between her then-feminist values and what would become a fascination with Marian art, she started on a quest to discover the Blessed Mother.
The Mary Pages is the result of this and contains epiphany-filled stories that lead ultimately to the writer’s dramatic conversion from atheism to Catholicism. However, that was not to be the end. Part memoir, part mystery story, this book is also a testimony of how a Mother patiently waited to bring one child home to her Son — and then slowly revealed her own heart to that soul.
Sally Read spoke to the Register from her home in Italy.
Do we need another book on Mary?
Most resoundingly, Yes. To begin with, this isn’t “another book about Mary” in the sense that it doesn’t systematically teach Church dogma and doctrine related to the Mother of God, though books like those are sorely needed too. My book is, instead, a personal investigation into how Mary inserted herself (by the will of God) into my life from earliest childhood and then guided me, over decades, to a relationship with her Son.
I believe that now — as much as at the height of the Protestant Reformation — this kind of story is crucial. In the book, I draw a parallel between how the iconoclasts smashed statues and tried to erase Mary from our churches and how, these days, society is intent on demolishing the definition of “woman.” I would suggest that the two movements are not unconnected.
Why is my story important? I always hesitate before publishing anything in the memoir form. But I believe that my life shows how God sends Mary — his “searcher, lady of the lost, God’s outlier” — into our stories and keeps vigil until God judges that we are ready to meet him.
You write that Marian devotion was not part of the process of your conversion to Catholicism; if so, when did the Mother of God become consciously part of your spiritual world?
It was a very gradual process. From my early 20s, Mary’s face in art fascinated me — it had done so in childhood, but I was less conscious of it — and then she became, in a kind of pagan sense, an essential part of my feminist, New Age outlook. I was almost obsessively writing poems about her from my late 20s. And then, about the time I became a mother, I both felt the fascination drop and her drawing nearer. My encounter with the Pietà in St. Peter’s would be life-changing, though its ramifications took years to unpack.
Yet, when I experienced Christ in 2010, which led to my reception into the Church in December of that year, I thought little of Mary. I was obsessed with Christ! In my conversion story Night’s Bright Darkness, I devote a chapter to Mary, and it shows that I was close to her and had an understanding of her role. But there were still some “blind spots” for me. And then, things shifted. I get to this in the last section of The Mary Pages. It is subtle, mysterious — not easy to summarize. To illustrate my spiritual shift, I tell the story of the apparition in Walsingham, England. It is very much to do with that. And with the first piece of Marian art that I loved: Raphael’s Madonna del Granduca.
Is it artworks only that influenced your Marian devotion, or have there been writers too?
Like most people, I love Caryll Houselander. I also love the Church Fathers’ writing on Mary. But I had no knowledge of those writings until my 40s. It was only Marian art that attracted me — and this is an important point, I think. Art reaches people in ways that other art forms don’t necessarily. A poem can’t jump out at you from a wall. I’m lucky in that I love art galleries and have always spent a lot of time mooching about in them. It was in a gallery in London that I began to get acquainted with Mary’s silence, her maternal eye.
Your book employs a refreshingly unique literary device to access its subject matter. Why did you structure the book in this way?
The idea of telling the story of my relationship with Mary through art seemed very obvious to me. It’s just the way that it happened. What I did was to take stories from my life that linked with the most important artworks in my life. Mary’s “insertion” into my life was immensely mysterious, and the stories come from those corners of life that we can’t always explain or would prefer to forget. What I was conscious of was that her presence gets stronger as the narrative progresses — until she’s there in the room with us.
It reads somewhat like a “literary detective” work. Did it feel like that when writing it?
A little bit. Any story of spiritual development or conversion is a search. I was, in a very literal sense, searching for the “reality” of Mary’s story when I was an atheist. I wanted to uncover what she was all about; I felt that paintings masked her true identity. My early writing is full of me trying to give Mary a voice or a story — sometimes, as I was an atheist, the results were blasphemous — but they were never intentionally disrespectful. I always loved her. The Mary Pages feels like a personal discovery of who she really is. So, yes, it has been a quest.
Although the book is not a memoir per se, do you see it as a companion piece to your 2016 memoir? Or is it a genre all its own?
It is a companion piece to Night’s Bright Darkness, I think — though both books stand alone. In the prelude to The Mary Pages, I describe the past as a lit house at night and say I had to walk around the house and look in through other windows to find this story — whereas Night’s Bright Darkness was, if you like, a case of walking in through the front door.
In terms of genre, The Mary Pages is a “literary memoir” that operates in the same way that a novel would — characterization, suggestive situations and subtle motivations drive the “plot” — but at the same time, it’s factual.
What sort of reaction from readers have you had to it?
People have said that they find it a page-turner — “riveting” is a word that has come up more than once.
There’s an element of surprise among readers, too. I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that this isn’t a book you would usually see written about the Blessed Mother. A few people have been surprised at my frankness about my pre-conversion life. But we can’t have stories about healing if we don’t see the brokenness; we can’t have stories about grace if we don’t see the sin. The beauty of Mary is that she’s there, finding us and keeping watch with us, wherever we are, and however far from God.
Has writing this book increased your devotion to the Blessed Mother?
Definitely. It felt like a love letter I needed to write. I didn’t know the conclusion when I started out. My understanding of the essence of Mary’s role comes in the final pages and is from the work of Pope Benedict XVI. Stumbling on that felt like a gift.
What do you hope The Mary Pages will achieve?
I hope it reaches readers beyond people already devoted to Mary — perhaps Protestants, pagans, nonbelievers. I hope it shows how Mary is both a woman and the Woman. I want people to hear what my spiritual director told me: “The Theotokos isn’t simply a woman. She’s a place. The holy city. She’s the womb that encompasses you and Christ — you’re both within her. You pray within her, and in that holding space, you become closer to him.”