A well-written but unrelenting memoir that portrays the strictures and darkness of a conservative sect.
A group of renegade Catholics takes over a young girl’s life in this debut memoir.
In the early 1960s, Vatican II abandoned the traditional Latin Mass and tried to foster a spirit of ecumenism and liberation. This repelled some traditional Catholics, some of whom turned toward leaders who would preserve what they saw as the old ways; one such leader, Bishop Francis Schuckardt, founded an extremely conservative sect that appealed to the author’s parents. They sent their young daughter to the sect’s boarding school, where, for several years, she says, she witnessed and experienced physical and psychological cruelty. She writes, for example, that she saw her own brother being made to walk on his knees through rocks and gravel as a punishment for giggling; other kids, she says, were taken to “the spanking room”; and at another point, she was told that the hamburgers that she and other girls were eating had been gathered from the trash. Schettler also writes that she heard accounts of drug use and sexual abuse in the community. Meanwhile, the sect’s authorities often hid things from the students, she says, which fostered a sense of social isolation: “We were told only what the superiors wanted us to know,” she writes. This is a grim, emotionally challenging story that shows, in intimate detail, how life in the sect cut the author off from the natural joys of youth. Having grown up in circumstances where she had to constantly “mortify” her eyes, the author repeatedly depicts how the sect twisted her ardent spirituality. The author later became a nun, and she details how she spent much of early adulthood in thrall to feckless and ineffectual superiors. This book will particularly appeal to survivors of cult experiences, as it effectively describes the path the author took through a world of suffocating, distorted religious ardor.
A well-written but unrelenting memoir that portrays the strictures and darkness of a conservative sect.Pub Date: Nov. 19, 2014
ISBN: 978-0-692-33197-2
Page Count: 211
Publisher: Lifelong Habits LLC
Review Posted Online: Jan. 24, 2018
Review Program: Kirkus Indie
This is not the Nutcracker sweet, as passed on by Tchaikovsky and Marius Petipa. No, this is the original Hoffmann tale of 1816, in which the froth of Christmas revelry occasionally parts to let the dark underside of childhood fantasies and fears peek through. The boundaries between dream and reality fade, just as Godfather Drosselmeier, the Nutcracker's creator, is seen as alternately sinister and jolly. And Italian artist Roberto Innocenti gives an errily realistic air to Marie's dreams, in richly detailed illustrations touched by a mysterious light. A beautiful version of this classic tale, which will captivate adults and children alike. (Nutcracker; $35.00; Oct. 28, 1996; 136 pp.; 0-15-100227-4)
Pub Date: Oct. 28, 1996
ISBN: 0-15-100227-4
Page Count: 136
Publisher: Harcourt
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Aug. 15, 1996
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
An extravaganza in Bemelmans' inimitable vein, but written almost dead pan, with sly, amusing, sometimes biting undertones, breaking through. For Bemelmans was "the man who came to cocktails". And his hostess was Lady Mendl (Elsie de Wolfe), arbiter of American decorating taste over a generation. Lady Mendl was an incredible person,- self-made in proper American tradition on the one hand, for she had been haunted by the poverty of her childhood, and the years of struggle up from its ugliness,- until she became synonymous with the exotic, exquisite, worshipper at beauty's whrine. Bemelmans draws a portrait in extremes, through apt descriptions, through hilarious anecdote, through surprisingly sympathetic and understanding bits of appreciation. The scene shifts from Hollywood to the home she loved the best in Versailles. One meets in passing a vast roster of famous figures of the international and artistic set. And always one feels Bemelmans, slightly offstage, observing, recording, commenting, illustrated.
Pub Date: Feb. 23, 1955
ISBN: 0670717797
Page Count: -
Publisher: Viking
Review Posted Online: Oct. 25, 2011
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 1955
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