And Then There Were Nuns: Adventures in a cloistered life

Description

When Colin asks Jane to marry him she joyfully accepts - but then asks him if he would mind waiting for a few months, maybe a year and a half, as she has always wondered if God was calling her to be a nun. Over the course of 18 months, in 2011-2012, she tests out this vocation in a series of religious houses, and we follow her journey and her wonderings. The religious houses she spends time in are based initially in Canada, but then on the Isle of Wight and finally North Yorkshire, and she meets a range of well-realised characters en route, finding both godliness and narrow minded prejudice and inhumanity in all places. What is God calling her to do? Superbly written, very funny, very evocative and very feisty.

Jane Christmas is an acclaimed Canadian writer of travel memoirs, including And Then There Were Nuns, her account of the time she spent testing out her vocation following a marriage proposal. And What the Psychic Told the Pilgrim: A Mid-Life misadventure on Spain's Camino de Santiago de Compostela. She now lives in Devon in the UK.

"Her style is equal parts Nora Ephron and Bill Bryson" * Quill & Quire * "Jane Christmas is, in a word, hilarious. She is definitely up there with Bill Bryson in the genre of funny travel writers." * Kingston-Waterloo Record * Overall, I'd say I liked this book. It was interesting to have an inside view of daily life in a convent and I learned about the Anglican Church, a subject I knew absolutely zero about. I couldn't really warm up to the author, she felt very immature and very prone to naval gazing at the cost of her closest relationships. A good storyteller though, even if the "main character" in the story wasn't someone I cared for all that much. If I knew someone who was struggling with their faith I'd probably recommend they read this as it gives a modern woman's perspective on an ancient, patriarchal system, and how to discover a way to find where you fit on that spectrum. -- Sandra Hall * Netgalley and Good Reads * This is the best kind of memoir, revealing, refreshing, and reflective enough to make readers turn many of the questions on themselves. A delightful trip down the road less travelled. -- ilene Cooper * Booklist * "A lovely, heartfelt tale. Get thee to a bookstore and buy it." -- A . J. Jacobs, author of The Year of Living Biblically "One doesn't necessarily think of spiritual autobiographies as being page-turners, but this zips along. Whizzing effortlessly from turmoil and rage about the treatment of women by the Anglican Church, to anxiety about the distressing lack of cosmetics in a convent, her exuberant humour makes this a refreshingly irreverent glimpse of monastic life." * The Daily Mail * "A most worthwhile and memorable read" * The Church Times *