SOURCE: "Lapsing," in The London Review of Books, Vol. 15, No. 7, April 8, 1993, p. 15.

Eagleton is a prominent English critic, essayist, novelist, and playwright. Written from a Marxist perspective, his critical works include Exiles and Emigrés: Studies in Modern Literature (1970), Walter Benjamin; or, Towards a Revolutionary Criticism (1981), and Literary Theory: An Introduction (1983). In the following review, he contends that No Other Life presents a formulaic view of third-world political dynamics.

There are no ex-Catholics, only lapsed ones. A lapse, as the light little monosyllable suggests, is a mere temporary aberration, an ephemeral error which can always be retrieved; and even the more ominous sounding 'excommunication' can always be undone by a quick bout of repentance. Leaving the Catholic church is as difficult as resigning from the Mafia; for the Church in its wisdom has artfully anticipated such renegacy and created within its ranks the special category of 'lapsed', wedged...