Jacket Reviews

 

‘Colm O’Gorman is one of the most inspiring and dignified voices heard in Ireland in recent times. He has triunphed over sexual abuse.’ - Mary Robinson, former President of Ireland.

 
‘This is the most important and moving story to come out of Ireland in many years. It shows how the gentle will inherit the earth.’ - Anne Enright

‘This is an important and chilling book, a testament to innocence and then to terrible experience. It is written clearly and with sincerity and at times with a controlled anger which is deeply affecting. It is a crucial document in the charting of a dark period in our history. It is also a story of bravery and survival, of strength and resilience, and will serve as an inspiration to many readers.’ – Colm Toibin

Press Reviews

 

O’Gorman…is a charismatic man, his words tumbling with the speed and lyrical cadence so typical of the Irish, yet so polished, so wholly formed in thought, that the deeply felt passion of it packs the punch of an evangelical preacher. When he considers people reading every detail of his story he shudders first and then says to himself, yes, you are going to read all of that – and that’s the point. He challenges you just by who he is and where he has been. - Scotland on Sunday

 

…clerical abuse is such a familiar story now that O’Gorman must have been concerned that his book could be affected by abuse fatigue among the general public. He need not have worried. His book is a riveting account of his own abuse and his battle with the Church — and he’s a very good writer, which helps. It seems certain to be a bestseller. – The Irish Independent

 

…a book full of truly radical ideas, in the way that Christ’s message of love and forgiveness, was radical. Although his story is painful and terrible to read, O’Gorman has created a next step, not so much an ending as a new beginning,  that is inspirational and moving. By refusing to see only his own hurt, by projecting that outwards and finding compassion for the society that let him down, and then by extending that compassion even to the man who so foully betrayed him, he has created the possibility of love in a vacuum of horror, and given an entire country strength to face its demons. –  Sunday Independent

 

Colm O’Gorman: a determined and fluent individual who has turned the trauma of his life into an extraordinary form of empowerment. - The Irish Times

 

Beyond Belief is both shocking and inspirational, evoking the terrible loneliness of the abused child before channelling the adults frustration, anger and passion for the truth. – RTE Guide

 

The cover image may have a whiff of a misery memoir about it, but O’Gorman’s intentions and indeed, the essence of the book, couldn’t be further from that… it gathers a David and Goliath momentum that underpins a central thesis about not staying inert in the face of injustice. – GCN