Diana Walsh Pasulka begins with an anecdote. Giving a Lent talk to the Catholic student centre at her university, at Wilmington, North Carolina, she began to speak on the subject of her research, Purgatory. She felt a tap on her arm and Sr Mary, an Ursuline nun said: “Purgatory is not a doctrine of the Church any more, is it?” And, the author adds: “The question was posed as a statement.”I’m glad to say that instead of more nun-baiting, the book then focuses on notions of purgatory as a place, perhaps on earth, as at Lough Derg, and upon the reimagination of Purgatory in popular culture that followed its neglect in Catholic practice. I confess this short book annoyed me in one respect, which will take two paragraphs to explain. Purgatory, it says, suffers fro