THE LIVELY ARTS OF SISTER GERVAISE

by John L. Bonn ‧ RELEASE DATE: March 28, 1957

This is an entertaining novelette depicting the interior and exterior trials and tribulations of a sensitive, cultivated and ""daring"" nun in charge of dramatics at St. Rita's parish high school. Sister Gervaise is an intelligent and zealous religious, who understands young people's problems, focusses on the essentials in matters of religion and education rather than fussing about accidentals, insists upon liturgical music's supplanting the customary sentimental hymns and prefers staging the plays of Gheon and T. S. Eliot to producing a parish minstrel show. Her Propensities do not sit well with the pastor, some of the other nuns, the janitor and the parents of the children who attend the school, and they involve her in difficulties as she attempts to ""buck"" the personalities that count and the customs that have prevailed in the life of the parish. At the end of the novel, just when things look blackest and she is about to be transferred to a college, her mandate of transfer is rescinded at the behest of pastor and people, who have belatedly come to appreciate her worth. The author paints faithful portraits of a number of typical personalities and customs one can come upon in the average American Catholic convent and parish. Strictly a novel in form, no explicit moral is drawn from the story, but the reader may detect that the author is implicitly paying a tribute to the American Catholic Sisterhood working in the Catholic schools and good-naturedly deploring the lack of refined sensibilities in some of the personalities dominant in the life of the average American Catholic parish, while he holds out hope that the situation will inevitably improve in the future.

Pub Date: March 28, 1957

ISBN: N/A

Page Count: -

Publisher: Kenedy

Review Posted Online: N/A

Kirkus Reviews Issue: March 1, 1957

Categories: NONFICTION