Nonbelievers won’t budge—and intrigued readers are better off requesting a transcript of the 20/20 feature that inspired...
A maudlin exploration of the paranormal events that surround Audrey Santo, a comatose 16-year-old from Worcester, Massachusetts, whom many consider to be a saint.
Promoting the notion that Audrey is Christ’s liaison, Felix (What Makes the Grand Canyon?, 1998, etc.) draws on press reports, television features, and interviews to chronicle her subject’s life. After Audrey’s close brush with death (from drowning) in 1987 left her dependent on life-support, her devout Catholic mother, Linda, took her on a pilgrimage to a Croatian village (in what was then still called Yugoslavia) where a group of children were reputed to be receiving apparitions of the Virgin Mary. Linda claims that during their pilgrimage the still-unconscious Audrey communicated with the Virgin Mary and volunteered to become a “victim soul”—a pious Christian who willingly takes on the pain of others in imitation of Christ. After their homecoming, Linda’s testimony was supported by a series of seemingly supernatural occurrences that took place in Audrey’s bedroom: for example, religious artifacts began to move, bleed, and leak oil. Audrey also developed stigmata—mysterious sores that resembled the crucifixion wounds of Christ. Convinced that Audrey was engaged in a silent conversation with Jesus, the family transformed their garage into a chapel and invited pilgrims to use the site as a place to pray for miracles. Although the Catholic Church has yet to conclude its investigation (and despite the fact that the Croatian visionaries have been condemned as frauds by their local bishop), Felix maintains that Linda’s assertions are truthful. She subtly discredits interviewees who question Audrey’s authenticity and portrays the Santos as living martyrs. Her overblown enthusiasm for her subject strips her reportage of credibility, however, and she fails to deliver concrete evidence, leaving us to wonder if Audrey is an ill-fated child who is being exploited. And although the material lends itself to high drama, intrigue, and intelligent speculation, the author’s vapid narration renders even the phenomena of bleeding paintings dull.
Nonbelievers won’t budge—and intrigued readers are better off requesting a transcript of the 20/20 feature that inspired Felix to write this bland and credulous account.Pub Date: April 20, 2001
ISBN: 0-312-27216-2
Page Count: 224
Publisher: Dunne/St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2001
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
This a book of earlier, philosophical essays concerned with the essential "absurdity" of life and the concept that- to overcome the strong tendency to suicide in every thoughtful man-one must accept life on its own terms with its values of revolt, liberty and passion. A dreary thesis- derived from and distorting the beliefs of the founders of existentialism, Jaspers, Heldegger and Kierkegaard, etc., the point of view seems peculiarly outmoded. It is based on the experience of war and the resistance, liberally laced with Andre Gide's excessive intellectualism. The younger existentialists such as Sartre and Camus, with their gift for the terse novel or intense drama, seem to have omitted from their philosophy all the deep religiosity which permeates the work of the great existentialist thinkers. This contributes to a basic lack of vitality in themselves, in these essays, and ten years after the war Camus seems unaware that the life force has healed old wounds... Largely for avant garde aesthetes and his special coterie.
Pub Date: Sept. 26, 1955
ISBN: 0679733736
Page Count: 228
Publisher: Knopf
Review Posted Online: Sept. 19, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 1955
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.
A teacher and scholar of Buddhism offers a formally varied account of the available rewards of solitude.
“As Mother Ayahuasca takes me in her arms, I realize that last night I vomited up my attachment to Buddhism. In passing out, I died. In coming to, I was, so to speak, reborn. I no longer have to fight these battles, I repeat to myself. I am no longer a combatant in the dharma wars. It feels as if the course of my life has shifted onto another vector, like a train shunted off its familiar track onto a new trajectory.” Readers of Batchelor’s previous books (Secular Buddhism: Imagining the Dharma in an Uncertain World, 2017, etc.) will recognize in this passage the culmination of his decadeslong shift away from the religious commitments of Buddhism toward an ecumenical and homegrown philosophy of life. Writing in a variety of modes—memoir, history, collage, essay, biography, and meditation instruction—the author doesn’t argue for his approach to solitude as much as offer it for contemplation. Essentially, Batchelor implies that if you read what Buddha said here and what Montaigne said there, and if you consider something the author has noticed, and if you reflect on your own experience, you have the possibility to improve the quality of your life. For introspective readers, it’s easy to hear in this approach a direct response to Pascal’s claim that “all of humanity's problems stem from man's inability to sit quietly in a room alone.” Batchelor wants to relieve us of this inability by offering his example of how to do just that. “Solitude is an art. Mental training is needed to refine and stabilize it,” he writes. “When you practice solitude, you dedicate yourself to the care of the soul.” Whatever a soul is, the author goes a long way toward soothing it.
A very welcome instance of philosophy that can help readers live a good life.Pub Date: Feb. 18, 2020
ISBN: 978-0-300-25093-0
Page Count: 200
Publisher: Yale Univ.
Review Posted Online: Nov. 24, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Dec. 15, 2019
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
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