This Book Is SO Catholic, Darlings!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

                                            When Ann Patchett publishes, I read her, darlings!  So, I don't want anyone, Ann least of all, to be offended by what I say here.  It would be insulting to compare Patchett to Olive Higgins Prouty, because Patchett is a better writer,  But, as Prouty specialized in stories of female self-sacrifice, like "Stella Dallas," and "Now, Voyager," so Patchett has written one of her own here.

                                             The title refers to an almost entirely glass structured residence in Elkins Park, PA, bought by Cyril Conroy, for his wife, Elna.  They have two children, Maeve and Daniel.
Elna despises the house, and crass materialism, and supposedly takes off for India.  Eventually, Cyril meets a younger woman, Andrea, who has two daughters, Norma and Bright (yes, that is her name!).  When Maeve and Danny are more of age, and with Cyril dead, Andrea becomes the Evil Stepmother, and kicks them out of the house.  Like Hansel and Gretel, they are on their own.  With no maternal figure to turn to, Maeve becomes Danny's, pushing him to exhaust the financial trust, so Andrea and offspring do not get any.  I was glad to see this, because I thought this would be a tale where the children, once adults, avenge themselves on the Evil Stepmother and siblings, and throw the girls, if still there, out.

                                               But Patchett is out for forgiveness, not vengeance, and this is how the novel turns Catholic, even though that word is never mentioned.

                                                 Maeve has no maternal figure, and raises Danny on her own.  Along the way, she develops juvenile diabetes, and has to contend with that for the rest of her life.  She pushes Danny into med school--at Columbia, no less!--and he makes it through, but, along the way finds his real passion--real estate--which makes him more money than medicine ever could.  Maeve, a brilliant mathematician, works as an accountant for a small time frozen vegetable company.

                                                   At some point, their mother reconnects with Maeve, and Danny, when the sister is hospitalized with a heart attack.  Elna, the mother, did, indeed go to India, as some Mother Teresa wannabe, but came back to the States, and has been living like a pauper, just one step from homeless, while serving the real homeless in soup kitchens and hospitals.  Their father never told them the truth, because she did not want them to know.  Now, she concentrates all her energy on Maeve, as well as Andrea and Norma, while Danny resents it, but comes to accept it, only his bitch wife, Celsete, does not, and divorces him.

                                                      The language is pure Patchett, but the story is pure 1930's.  Even though it takes place in the more recent present, over a period of fifty years.   Maeve gives her life up for her brother, first, and then her mother, allowing her to now martyr herself for her daughter.  So, there are two self-sacrificing females here.  Maeve's motives are clear, but Elna's really aren't.  Is she campaigning for sainthood? Because that is what she is acting like!  Is she guilty over marrying rich? Patchett hints at these ideas,  but never supplies an answer her; the only real criticism I have of this novel.

                                                          But, I am telling you, if one is a devout Catholic, or even a lapsed one, this novel will have you self flagellating, and stretching out like a crucifix on a stone floor, for eight hours straight.

                                                           I wish I could have said it should have been on The Times' list, but it misses something.  Patchett's writing skill holds it all together.

                                                             Still, it is the most Catholic novel I have read, in years!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!