As one of the most ancient motifs in western literature, katabasis or the descent into the underworld is a metaphor that is mapped onto many different aspects of life, ranging from a struggle with mortality to a display of social critique and a confrontation with the past. The last variant is the subject of S.'s topical monograph, in which she analyses underworld descents in twentieth-century Irish and Caribbean literature from the perspective of memory studies. The volume, based on S.'s 2018 dissertation defended at the University of Warwick, focuses on what S. calls ‘mnemonic’ rather than ‘traditional’ underworld descents (p. 2). She identifies these as ‘narrative memories’ that are in one way or another removed from the classical intertexts, due to ‘decontextualization’, a ‘fluidity’ of intertexts and/or ‘schematization’, i.e. a focus on certain aspects of the descent narrative only (p. 2). Freedom in the engagement with the intertext is undoubtedly a characteristic of twentieth-century classical receptions, although many of the texts S. discusses betray a fairly specific relationship to individual classical descents, in particular to the nekyia in Book 11 of the Odyssey and Book 6 of Virgil's Aeneid.

S. mostly refers to intertexts that belong to what R.J. Clark, besides the so-called ‘fertility tradition’ of the descent of Persephone, distinguished as the ‘wisdom tradition’ (R.J. Clark, Catabasis [1979], pp. 22–36). S. argues that these texts not so much deal with the pursuit of truth and knowledge and rather with a quest for the memories and commemoration of the dead. The factual information obtained from the dead in the Odyssey and the Aeneid is indeed notoriously limited, and a focus on the emotional value of the meeting with, especially, the deceased parent is therefore refreshing. Moreover, in the twentieth-century texts discussed the underworld descent is mapped onto, in particular, the pain of the colonial past. Thus, S. has a point in interpreting these receptions as acts of memory.

In her analysis S. tries to establish the reasons for the popularity of this use of the motif in postcolonial worlds, applying concepts from the still fairly young fields of reception studies and memory studies alike, and providing readers with clear and informative overviews of both. She then discusses adaptations of classical underworld scenes in twentieth-century literature as narratives that refigure what she calls ‘memoryscapes’ of the underworld (p. 58).

The volume discusses katabasis in the work of a rich range of five authors from ‘colonised countries post-independence’ (p. 34), the Irish or Northern Irish poets Michael Longley, Seamus Heaney and Eavan Boland as well as the Caribbean poet Derek Walcott and the Guyanese novelist Wilson Harris, who have engaged extensively with the classics in general and with the Graeco-Roman underworld in particular. S. convincingly shows how these authors have managed to locate the classical underworld as places of memory in their home countries. She also correctly states that katabasis in the twentieth century is a genre that specifically explores its own intertextuality as a form of memory. The interaction of a text with the intertexts is a descent into the literary afterlife in itself, and it is this aspect that often makes katabasis such a compelling motif. S., furthermore, organically shows the common threads in the uses of the classical underworld within the works of these modern authors, highlighting relevant elements of the texts, their intertexts and their critical responses. The rich collection of authors from two sides of the prime meridian, moreover, makes it clear that classical receptions are no longer to be perceived as necessarily linear enterprises that put the classics in an authoritative position but rather as bringing together similar worlds of memory.

Nevertheless, the study would have benefited from the inclusion of Dante's Divine Comedy as a katabatic intertext and point of reference. Although Dante's work does not technically belong to the realm of classical reception studies, Dante's travels through hell and purgatory, and his vision of heaven constitute the largest katabasis in all of western literature and therefore cannot be omitted from a study of this motif. The Divine Comedy has profoundly influenced later descent literature, especially since its propagation by T.S. Eliot and Ezra Pound at the height of modernism, and its role in the adaptations of the underworld in the work of these five authors is indeed unmistakable. As a result, S.'s monograph lacks an analysis of, for example, Heaney's reception of Dante's Purgatory in his sequence ‘Station Island’ from 1985, which constitutes a turning point in his work.

Furthermore, despite her success in applying new concepts to the study of this ancient motif, S.'s analysis of the individual texts is occasionally somewhat reductive, for example when she states in her analysis of Eavan Boland's katabatic poem ‘The Journey’, that ‘one of Eavan Boland's main poetic interests is the mnemonic recreation of a female voice’ (p. 125). As has been pointed out by M. Thurston (The Underworld [2009], p. 98), Boland on the contrary stresses that this recreation is impossible and that testifying to that fact is at the heart of her poetics.

Moreover, when S. discusses katabasis in the poetry and plays of Derek Walcott, she seems to assume that this poet made extensive use of katabasis throughout his work, while in fact it is almost exclusively found in his well-known masterpiece Omeros. Within Omeros adaptations of the motif can be found in multiple scenes, from which S. only discusses two in depth, the katabatic experiences of Achille. The meeting of the persona with the ghost of his deceased father in an Elysian Castries early on in the poem is not discussed, nor is the narrator's visit to the museum in Boston recognised as a katabasis, although it constitutes a confrontation with historical statues and paintings inviting an analysis from the angle of memory studies. Moreover, due to the focus on antiquity only, the katabatic culmination of the poem, the Dantean katabasis of the persona at the end, only receives minimal treatment. One may also wonder whether Achille's vision of Africa due to a sunstroke can, like his earlier diving for treasure, really be classified as a submarine descent.

Despite these flaws, the volume persuasively demonstrates that modern receptions of the classical underworld descent often serve the processing of memories of the recent, colonial past and that this fact accounts for the popularity of the motif in some of the landmarks of classical reception in twentieth-century writing.