SOURCE: Ruthven, Malise. “The Virgin Speaks Only the Purest Croatian.” Times Literary Supplement, no. 4781 (18 November 1994): 27.

In the following review, Ruthven criticizes Tóibín's prose style in The Sign of the Cross, commenting that his language is sometimes too simplistic for his subject matter.

At Vinegar Hill outside Enniscorthy, the Wexford rebels of 1798 made their last stand against the English—and lost. Colm Tóibín could see Vinegar Hill from his childhood home. Like every other Irish child, he had been told how “the English poured boiling tar on the scalps of the Irish and when the tar dried they peeled it off, whereas our side, the peasant Catholic Irish, had been noble and brave.” The names of the towns and villages surrounding Enniscorthy were canonized in the history books as places where battles had been fought or atrocities committed. One place that was never mentioned, however...