Books: Farce of the Year

THE STRAIGHT AND NARROW PATH (245 pp.)—Honor Tracy—Random House ($3.50).

When it comes to pulling legs, the Irish have a natural preference for the leg to be English and themselves on the pulling end. In defying this convention, Novelist Honor (The Deserters) Tracy, herself part Irish, and a Catholic at that, has shown a distinct preference for legs that protrude beneath the cassocks of Irish parish priests.

To borrow the book's idiom, The Straight and Narrow Path is the tale of a great haroosh*in the village of Patrickstown, and it may be said without fear of successful contradiction that neither Barry Fitzgerald nor...