A scrupulous dissection of the daily lives of a group of cloistered 17th-century Franciscan nuns as seen through the eyes of one blighted sister in their midst. Harline (History/Brigham Young Univ.) has amassed rare evidence from a convent in the Spanish Netherlands to show that, during the Catholic Counter Reformation, religious life was ``shaped by debate...rather than established forever by arbitrary proclamations from on high.'' Toward this end, he offers the correspondence of (and about) the convent's controversial Sister Margaret Smulders, whom he calls ``one of the most prolific letter- writers in early modern monastic history.'' Margaret earns the hatred of her Mother Superior and becomes an outcast among her sisters after her allegations of sexual harassment against the well-liked convent confessor result in his dismissal. She is charged with harboring demonic spirits and all manner of evils. She is then banished—remaining defenseless until the archbishop and another powerful male religious figure become her advocates. But after exorcisms and an apparent ``recovery,'' Margaret returns only to be excluded from the main life of the convent. Finally, she becomes a full-time chronicler of convent ills. Her vast correspondence with the powerful clergy—written mainly in anticipation of their periodic corrective ``visitations''—form the basis of Harline's narrative. But Margaret's litany of complaints varies little. What are interesting points the first time around- -that too many nuns pursue temporal pleasures or fraternize with outsiders through the convent gates—wear thin by the fourth official visit. Though many of the reforms Margaret recommends are actually prescribed, few of them are enacted, and she dies largely defeated. Though sad, Margaret's tale effectively illustrates Harline's point that ``if a superior wanted to ensure that reform went in a certain way, he would have to do more than merely issue decrees.'' A lovingly wrought—but overly lengthy—bit of arcane religious history. (b&w illustrations)
Pub Date: Aug. 1, 1994
ISBN: 0-385-47395-8
Page Count: 359
Publisher: Doubleday
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 1, 1994
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
The author's youthfulness helps to assure the inevitable comparison with the Anne Frank diary although over and above the...
Elie Wiesel spent his early years in a small Transylvanian town as one of four children.
He was the only one of the family to survive what Francois Maurois, in his introduction, calls the "human holocaust" of the persecution of the Jews, which began with the restrictions, the singularization of the yellow star, the enclosure within the ghetto, and went on to the mass deportations to the ovens of Auschwitz and Buchenwald. There are unforgettable and horrifying scenes here in this spare and sombre memoir of this experience of the hanging of a child, of his first farewell with his father who leaves him an inheritance of a knife and a spoon, and of his last goodbye at Buchenwald his father's corpse is already cold let alone the long months of survival under unconscionable conditions.
Pub Date: Jan. 16, 2006
ISBN: 0374500010
Page Count: 120
Publisher: Hill & Wang
Review Posted Online: Oct. 7, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Jan. 15, 2006
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular...
A neurosurgeon with a passion for literature tragically finds his perfect subject after his diagnosis of terminal lung cancer.
Writing isn’t brain surgery, but it’s rare when someone adept at the latter is also so accomplished at the former. Searching for meaning and purpose in his life, Kalanithi pursued a doctorate in literature and had felt certain that he wouldn’t enter the field of medicine, in which his father and other members of his family excelled. “But I couldn’t let go of the question,” he writes, after realizing that his goals “didn’t quite fit in an English department.” “Where did biology, morality, literature and philosophy intersect?” So he decided to set aside his doctoral dissertation and belatedly prepare for medical school, which “would allow me a chance to find answers that are not in books, to find a different sort of sublime, to forge relationships with the suffering, and to keep following the question of what makes human life meaningful, even in the face of death and decay.” The author’s empathy undoubtedly made him an exceptional doctor, and the precision of his prose—as well as the moral purpose underscoring it—suggests that he could have written a good book on any subject he chose. Part of what makes this book so essential is the fact that it was written under a death sentence following the diagnosis that upended his life, just as he was preparing to end his residency and attract offers at the top of his profession. Kalanithi learned he might have 10 years to live or perhaps five. Should he return to neurosurgery (he could and did), or should he write (he also did)? Should he and his wife have a baby? They did, eight months before he died, which was less than two years after the original diagnosis. “The fact of death is unsettling,” he understates. “Yet there is no other way to live.”
A moving meditation on mortality by a gifted writer whose dual perspectives of physician and patient provide a singular clarity.Pub Date: Jan. 19, 2016
ISBN: 978-0-8129-8840-6
Page Count: 248
Publisher: Random House
Review Posted Online: Sept. 29, 2015
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2015
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