The White Mare

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By Michael McLaverty
Foreword by Miguel Mesquita da Cunha
(2006)

Discussion Guide Included

This Reading features a short story by the northern Irish writer Michael McLaverty. McLaverty takes us to a seemingly remote island in a seemingly remote time. But his careful attention to the small details of this account of a few days in the life of an elderly farmer plowing his field reveals something profound about the human condition and the beauty and struggles of the world we inhabit.

We are introduced anew to some universal themes—including work and our relation to it, beauty and suffering, and the transitions of life—and permitted to live deeper within the question of what it all means. The selection is also a good introduction to the transparent yet evocative prose of an under-appreciated twentieth-century master of the short story.

Category: Readings (No. 42)

For many, the evil in the world overshadows the good, obscures it, and even causes its denial. But it is the fact of joy that is the real mystery of our being.

James V. Schall, S.J., On the Unseriousness of Human Affairs, xiv

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