SOURCE: “Ecclesiastical Auras,” in Times Literary Supplement, September 8, 1989, p. 968.

In the following review of Fludd, Duguid commends the novel as both “funny and moving.”

Fludd is a novel about Roman Catholicism which is in the tradition of Muriel Spark rather than David Lodge. Serious without being pious, satirical without being trivial, and always forgiving, it describes the religion of Fetherhoughton, a windswept Northern town whose hideous stone terraces are caught between mill and moor. Fetherhoughton's deformed Irish Catholicism, which puts an emphasis on abstinence and sin, is better suited to the uncompromising nature of its citizens than the more florid manifestations of the Church of Rome.

The rites observed there have all but lost touch with Christianity. The grim women, banded together as Children of Mary in order to enjoy “strong tea, parlour games and character assassination,” relish the conviction that their Protestant neighbours will burn in Hell...