This moving and funny portrait of quandaries of faith and fragile family connections brings to life a high-strung matriarch's many obsessions, from proper pope-viewing attire to Saint Theresa's eyebrows.
A conflicted Catholic and amateur linguist, Ursula Codwell has a passion for saints and semantics that is surpassed only by the affection she feels for her husband, her children, and her precious bulldog. Raised in what she refers to as the "fraught and schizoid tradition of Belgian Catholicism," Ursula suffers from neuroses that threaten to overwhelm her children and her ostensibly...