SOURCE: "Julia Cahill, Father McTurnan, and the Geography of Nowhere," in Literature and the Art of Creation, edited by Robert Welch and Suheil Badi Bushrui, Colin Smythe, 1988, pp. 98-111.

Martin is an Irish critic and educator. In the following essay, he finds the themes of social and spiritual bleakness in the story "Julia Cahill's Curse" representative of Moore's short fiction in The Untilled Field.

'Julia Cahill's Curse' is deservedly the most famous and anthologised story in George Moore's Untilled Field. In the first edition of the book it is placed between two of the most neglected pieces, 'A Letter to Rome' and 'A Play-House in the Waste,' forming with them a coherent triptych centred upon Moore's vision of the two most desolate parishes in Mayo, one managed by the puritan Father Madden, the other by the saintly Father McTurnan. Their themes of social and spiritual bleakness, of...