People have been recommending this one to me, for months, and now, having read it, I must read more Alice McDermott. Having been raised Catholic, it resonates, but even non-Catholics will find it revealing and informative. It's no "Song Of Bernadette"--what is?--but its miracles stay within the earthly, rather than celestial realm.
Set in early twentieth century Brooklyn, a time when the Catholic Church RULED, the novel starts out with Annie, a woman widowed by a horrible tragedy, who becomes the laundress to a group of nuns in a convent, and raises her daughter's around them.
The forward thinking begins when one of the nuns takes it upon herself, to handle the tragedy and overlook church doctrine. She succeeds. Raised among nuns for so long, Sally inevitably wants to become one, but obstacles put in her path force her to reject that decision at a crucial moment.
Her mother, out of loneliness, embarks on an adulterous relationship with a milkman whose wife, I would say, is psychologically disabled, as an excuse for not performing wifely duties; that is, she cannot abide sex. While having rejected the lifestyle, Sally still has the values of a nun, and is determined to save her mother' soul. But what she comes up with to do this, as well as the reveal of the narrator near the end, really plays fast and lose with church doctrine. I was genuinely shocked!
I will not say any more, except it is gorgeously written, and I must read more McDermott. It will also provoke great discussions among book groups and readers, Catholic or not.
Sister Camille, if you have not already, I encourage you to read this!!!!!!!!!!!
My father was raised Catholic, my mother Mennonite.
ReplyDeleteI rejected both.
ReplyDeleteI was raised Catholic
and still have a lot of me
ingrained in me. But there
were issues within my family,
and I may write more about
those sometime.