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A review by liralen
And Then There Were Nuns: Adventures in a Cloistered Life by Jane Christmas
3.0
My fiancé is driving me to a nunnery (85).
In And Then There Were Nuns, Christmas finds herself in a midlife crisis of sorts: does she get married again—or become a nun? Unable to shake the idea of joining a convent, she sets off to explore the possibility, ultimately spending time with nuns and monks in a handful of places. Along the way, she is forced to confront a difficult piece of her past.
Now, if you make it past page 3 or so, it should be clear which path Christmas chooses,* but at the time it wasn't clear to her. (If you have yet to make it past page 3, be warned: spoilers below!) She finds it a mixed experience—even as she relaxes into patterns and routines, she chafes against convention (sorry...couldn't help it).
Unfortunately Christmas isn't really for me as a writer; I read [b:What the Psychic Told the Pilgrim|2018455|What the Psychic Told the Pilgrim A Midlife Misadventure on Spain's Camino de Santiago|Jane Christmas|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1389306840s/2018455.jpg|2022790] last year and was similarly enchanted by the experience but disenchanted by the voice. I stopped wearing makeup, cut off my hair, and stopped coloring it. Catching sight of myself in the mirror one day, I wondered, When did I become a lesbian? (82) (Actually, what galls about that one is that I can't call her out on the stereotype because I fit it too well.) Not really sure what to make of her interest in St. Scholastica (155-156)—in my (admittedly very limited) understanding of her, she was basically...smited down by God? Surely I must be missing something here.** And it just...always felt as if she wanted credit for doing voluntarily the things that the nuns have committed to doing (going without, doing chores, etc.).
But I digress. It's an interesting book, clear though it is that (spoiler!) it's not meant to be:
"I'm afraid I've come to the conclusion that I am not nun material."
"You're kidding," Sister Dorothy Stella deadpanned. "I could have told you that ages ago." (258)
And oh, drat all, I'm still digressing. I think what sits poorly with me is the impression I got that Christmas partly found a mismatch between her life and a nun's life...but that she also partially thought a nun's life wasn't good enough for her. Could I really surrender to a creative gag order, even if God were my boss? Surely He had something better in mind for me (222). And indeed—Jesus informs her in a vision that she's going to help Save the Nuns by writing about them (269).
To be clear (and fairer), I really, really don't think she's actually looking down on the nuns, just that she's pretty set in her ways already and has a rich secular life. I admire her for really making a go of it; it seems to have been a question she really needed to answer before she could move off in other directions. She also addresses some pretty serious parts of her past, which takes guts—both to address in the first place and to write about later. Many of the things that grated me probably wouldn't have bothered me in another book, so I can only conclude that this is largely a case of mismatch between book/author and reader.
*Even so, I assiduously refrained from reading this article until I'd finished the book. Just in case.
**And the Internet tells me that she ended up in heaven, so I guess she probably wasn't smited. (The Internet also tells me that smited is not a word, and that smote or smitten would be appropriate, but I am choosing to ignore that.)
In And Then There Were Nuns, Christmas finds herself in a midlife crisis of sorts: does she get married again—or become a nun? Unable to shake the idea of joining a convent, she sets off to explore the possibility, ultimately spending time with nuns and monks in a handful of places. Along the way, she is forced to confront a difficult piece of her past.
Now, if you make it past page 3 or so, it should be clear which path Christmas chooses,* but at the time it wasn't clear to her. (If you have yet to make it past page 3, be warned: spoilers below!) She finds it a mixed experience—even as she relaxes into patterns and routines, she chafes against convention (sorry...couldn't help it).
Unfortunately Christmas isn't really for me as a writer; I read [b:What the Psychic Told the Pilgrim|2018455|What the Psychic Told the Pilgrim A Midlife Misadventure on Spain's Camino de Santiago|Jane Christmas|https://d.gr-assets.com/books/1389306840s/2018455.jpg|2022790] last year and was similarly enchanted by the experience but disenchanted by the voice. I stopped wearing makeup, cut off my hair, and stopped coloring it. Catching sight of myself in the mirror one day, I wondered, When did I become a lesbian? (82) (Actually, what galls about that one is that I can't call her out on the stereotype because I fit it too well.) Not really sure what to make of her interest in St. Scholastica (155-156)—in my (admittedly very limited) understanding of her, she was basically...smited down by God? Surely I must be missing something here.** And it just...always felt as if she wanted credit for doing voluntarily the things that the nuns have committed to doing (going without, doing chores, etc.).
But I digress. It's an interesting book, clear though it is that (spoiler!) it's not meant to be:
"I'm afraid I've come to the conclusion that I am not nun material."
"You're kidding," Sister Dorothy Stella deadpanned. "I could have told you that ages ago." (258)
And oh, drat all, I'm still digressing. I think what sits poorly with me is the impression I got that Christmas partly found a mismatch between her life and a nun's life...but that she also partially thought a nun's life wasn't good enough for her. Could I really surrender to a creative gag order, even if God were my boss? Surely He had something better in mind for me (222). And indeed—Jesus informs her in a vision that she's going to help Save the Nuns by writing about them (269).
To be clear (and fairer), I really, really don't think she's actually looking down on the nuns, just that she's pretty set in her ways already and has a rich secular life. I admire her for really making a go of it; it seems to have been a question she really needed to answer before she could move off in other directions. She also addresses some pretty serious parts of her past, which takes guts—both to address in the first place and to write about later. Many of the things that grated me probably wouldn't have bothered me in another book, so I can only conclude that this is largely a case of mismatch between book/author and reader.
*Even so, I assiduously refrained from reading this article until I'd finished the book. Just in case.
**And the Internet tells me that she ended up in heaven, so I guess she probably wasn't smited. (The Internet also tells me that smited is not a word, and that smote or smitten would be appropriate, but I am choosing to ignore that.)