A thoughtful, engrossing rumination on the relationship between organized religion and personal faith.
In this novel, a young monk grapples with the complexities of the spirit and the flesh while living in a French monastery.
In this first installment of The Abbey Chronicles, readers are introduced to Jean Moreau, who lives as a monk in Kervennec Abbey, a small monastery in modern-day Brittany, France. In an attempt to “know [him]self—[his] true self,” Moreau dives headfirst into the daily and spiritual rhythms of life at the abbey. He also contemplates some of life’s biggest questions and themes, including humanity’s propensity for judging others (“As exercised by so many organized religions, not just we Catholics, judgment takes an insidious form”) and the presence or lack of “Eternal Life” in the face of death. Intertwined with Moreau’s spiritual reflections are his very human and earthly struggles, including his sexual attraction to a woman he knew at his university. But even as he grapples with temptation in the midst of his desire for spiritual truth, Moreau must weigh his duties and responsibilities when the possibility arises of being bestowed a new position at the abbey. He ends with a promise to continue sharing his personal triumphs and tribulations in a subsequent volume. Eide skillfully imbues Moreau’s voice with warmth and a certain relatability (largely through his nagging sense of self-doubt) that readers will likely admire even if they cannot completely understand the monk’s extreme life path. Despite some of the dialogue being rather clunky in places (“Father, what I am about to reveal to you saddens and embarrasses me considerably”), the calm and unflappable narration easily smooths over any bumps. And while some of Moreau’s observations are quite obvious (popular measures of success, like power, will not “bear the fruit of real contentment”), many others manage to transcend Roman Catholicism (and even Christianity)—such as the very Buddhist-like idea that an individual’s role when emotions arise is to “observe them” and “let them go.” This engaging, memoir-esque spiritual exploration ultimately raises age-old questions in a fresh format.
A thoughtful, engrossing rumination on the relationship between organized religion and personal faith.Pub Date: Nov. 6, 2018
ISBN: 9781944030063
Page Count: 303
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 21, 2025
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
Uneven but fitfully amusing.
Betrayed by her husband, a severely depressed young woman gets drawn into the over-the-top festivities at a lavish wedding.
Phoebe Stone, who teaches English literature at a St. Louis college, is plotting her own demise. Her husband, Matt, has left her for another woman, and Phoebe is taking it hard. Indeed, she's determined just where and how she will end it all: at an oceanfront hotel in Newport, where she will lie on a king-sized canopy bed and take a bottle of her cat’s painkillers. At the hotel, Phoebe meets bride-to-be Lila, a headstrong rich girl presiding over her own extravagant six-day wedding celebration. Lila thought she had booked every room in the hotel, and learning of Phoebe's suicidal intentions, she forbids this stray guest from disrupting the nuptials: “No. You definitely can’t kill yourself. This is my wedding week.” After the punchy opening, a grim flashback to the meltdown of Phoebe's marriage temporarily darkens the mood, but things pick up when spoiled Lila interrupts Phoebe's preparations and sweeps her up in the wedding juggernaut. The slide from earnest drama to broad farce is somewhat jarring, but from this point on, Espach crafts an enjoyable—if overstuffed—comedy of manners. When the original maid of honor drops out, Phoebe is persuaded, against her better judgment, to take her place. There’s some fun to be had here: The wedding party—including groom-to-be Gary, a widower, and his 11-year-old daughter—takes surfing lessons; the women in the group have a session with a Sex Woman. But it all goes on too long, and the humor can seem forced, reaching a low point when someone has sex with the vintage wedding car (you don’t want to know the details). Later, when two characters have a meet-cute in a hot tub, readers will guess exactly how the marriage plot resolves.
Uneven but fitfully amusing.Pub Date: July 30, 2024
ISBN: 9781250899576
Page Count: 384
Publisher: Henry Holt
Review Posted Online: Sept. 13, 2024
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
SEEN & HEARD
I Who Have Never Known Men ($22.00; May 1997; 224 pp.; 1-888363-43-6): In this futuristic fantasy (which is immediately reminiscent of Margaret Atwood's The Handmaid's Tale), the nameless narrator passes from her adolescent captivity among women who are kept in underground cages following some unspecified global catastrophe, to a life as, apparently, the last woman on earth. The material is stretched thin, but Harpman's eye for detail and command of tone (effectively translated from the French original) give powerful credibility to her portrayal of a human tabula rasa gradually acquiring a fragmentary comprehension of the phenomena of life and loving, and a moving plangency to her muted cri de coeur (``I am the sterile offspring of a race about which I know nothing, not even whether it has become extinct'').
Pub Date: May 1, 1997
ISBN: 1-888363-43-6
Page Count: 224
Publisher: N/A
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 1997
BOOK REVIEW
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