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Title details for Cloistered by Catherine Coldstream - Available

Cloistered

My Years as a Nun

by Catherine Coldstream
ebook
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AN NPR BEST BOOK OF THE YEAR
"A profoundly moving memoir which gripped me . . . It's about spirituality and asceticism and silence and sisterhood, but also about how flawed human beings can abuse power and how hermetically sealed communities, which should care for and protect their members, can be dangerously vulnerable to threats from inside their walls." - Mark Haddon, author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, The Porpoise and others

An astonishing memoir of twelve years as a contemplative nun in a silent monastery.
Cloistered takes the reader deep into the hidden world of a traditional Carmelite monastery as it approaches the third Millennium and tells the story of an intense personal journey into and out of an enclosed life of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Finding an apparently perfect world at Akenside Priory, in Northumberland, Catherine trusts herself to a group of twenty silent women, believing she is trusting herself to God. As the beauty and mystery of an ancient way of life enfold her, she surrenders herself wholly to its power, quite unaware of the complexity and dangers that lie ahead.
Cut off from the wider world for decades, the community has managed to evade accountability to any authority beyond itself. When Sister Catherine realises that a mesmerising cult of the personality, with the distortions it entails, has replaced the ancient ideal of religious obedience, she is faced with a dilemma. Will she submit to this, or will she be forced to speak out?
An exploration of the limits of trust, Cloistered shows us how far youthful idealism can take us along the road of self-surrender, and of how much harm is done when institutional flaws go unacknowledged. Catherine's honest account of her time in the monastery – and her dramatic flight from it – is both a love song to a lost community and an exploration of what is most compelling, yet most potentially destructive when closed human groups become laws unto themselves.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    March 12, 2024

  • Formats

    • Kindle Book

    • OverDrive Read

      • ISBN: 9781250323521

    • EPUB ebook

      • ISBN: 9781250323521
      • File size: 3080 KB

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • Library Journal

      October 1, 2023

      Having converted to Catholicism after her father's death, Coldstream became a Carmelite nun for 12 years but left the order at age 39, abhorring the cult of personality that had replaced the venerable concept of religious obedience. Here she peers intently at her journey into and out of the priory while contemplating the joys and dangers of living within an enclosed community. With a 60,000-copy first printing. Prepub Alert.

      Copyright 2023 Library Journal

      Copyright 2023 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from January 29, 2024
      In this penetrating debut memoir, former nun Coldstream describes her 12 years in an English priory and the circumstances that led to her eventual departure. Raised in an emotionally chilly family, Coldstream became bereft at age 24 when her elderly father died. After involving herself with various religious groups in an effort to aid her “long passage... across unfamiliar landscape” of grief, Coldstream found comfort in silent prayer at northern England’s Akenside Priory. Inspired by the discipline and ritual she encountered there, Coldstream joined the mostly silent nuns’ ranks. As time wore on, however, her “hospital for wounded souls” turned icy and toxic, with infighting, big egos, and power struggles troubling the waters in which Coldstream initially found solace. After her conflicts with her fellow nuns reached a fever pitch over the course of a decade, the author fled the cloister in the middle of the night. In lyrical, evocative prose (“Time passes in the monastery like ghosts that move through walls; it seeps through cell doors and stony archways, through bone and marrow, imprinting patience and endurance at every touch”), Coldstream opens a window into a reclusive culture, resolutely exposing its problems without losing sight of its virtues. The results will fascinate believers and non-believers alike. Agent: Patrick Walsh, PEW Literary.

    • Booklist

      February 15, 2024
      As a young adult in the 1990s, Coldstream was completely unmoored following her father's death and the subsequent sale of their family home. In her loss and grief, she was comforted by choral singing that offered glimmers of heaven and transcendent love. Touchstone relationships with an aunt who was ""married to God"" and another nun stoked Coldstream's own interest in a cloistered life. She visited a Carmelite priory in northern England and was taken with its setting ""made for magic fulfillment": cloister, belltower, weathervane, orchards. Coldstream went through formation as aspirant, postulant, novice, and sister. She recounts a fascinating medieval way of life lived in her cell and choir stall, in the refectory and infirmary--a regimented life behind the grille. When her prioress informed her that she was not "ordinary" enough, the author was blindsided. Factions, favoritism, and stunning mistreatment left her reeling in a swirl of spiritual abuse. Readers interested in spiritual memoirs and religious formation, abuse, and reform will welcome Coldstream's intelligent, unflinching writing and perceptive account of years as a cloistered nun.

      COPYRIGHT(2024) Booklist, ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.

Formats

  • Kindle Book
  • OverDrive Read
  • EPUB ebook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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