Last year one of the PopSugar Reading Challenge prompts was “A book set in an abbey, cloister, monastery, vicarage, or convent.” I was surprised to see, in a discussion of suitable books for the category, that some people disliked this particular prompt. Perhaps they thought of such places as boring, and therefore any book set in such a place as boring? Yet for those not interested in the setting for its religious value, there are quite a number of murder mysteries that use such settings. (Perhaps that is because readers like to see a murder mystery in a place “slightly removed from the world we live in ourselves.”)
As it happened, I ended up reading two such murder mysteries for this category. First I first read Saint’s Gate, by Carla Neggers, then decided that a lot of the action had taken place outside the convent, and read Murder at the Vicarage by Agatha Christie. In both cases, though, the novel’s focus was really on the murder, and unlike those other readers, I am quite interested in the motivations for religious life, the various religious practices, and how the lives of people attempting to live by those ideals work out. So I had planned on reading In This House of Brede by Rumer Godden, where the life in the monastery (I had thought it would be called a convent, but it is a monastery – see this explanation for the difference between the two) is what the novel is all about.
I had very little idea beyond that what the book was about, just that it had very good reviews and it was by Rumer Godden. As a child I read Rumer Godden’s Little Plum multiple times (and I was disappointed to find that the library doesn’t have a copy for me to read it again), so I knew this novel would be well-written. Somehow, though, I just didn’t get around to requesting In This House of Brede from interlibrary loan, so at the end of 2019 it was still on my to-be-read list. Then when I saw that this year’s PopSugar Reading Challenge includes the prompt “A book you meant to read in 2019,” I decided Godden’s book would be perfect for it.
I imagine that people who don’t care for books set in a monastery (or other religious house) would probably not like this novel. It has little in the way of plot, which puzzled me for a while, but did not bother me, because I was so interested in the characters. There are a lot of them, and it took me a while to get the names straight of even the primary ones. Despite that, however, I was immediately drawn into the drama of their lives. There doesn’t have to be anything generally thought of as “dramatic” happening, though it does begin with the death of the abbess and all the turmoil resulting from it. Everyday life is full of struggles, big and small, from the friction among different personalities to a looming financial crisis.
Throughout all of it, the women spend most of their time in worship and in work, and are continually reminded of their higher purpose, to serve God and one another. It does not remove the sting of a cutting remark nor the grief of a long-ago but still painful loss, and some readers will no doubt be surprised by how much like the rest of us these women are. They spend hours a day in prayer and sung worship, but they also have their petty jealousies, strong differences of opinion on whether to maintain old traditions or change them, as well as a variety of interests and skills that they try to find ways to use in service to God and the monastery.
One gets a sense of the rhythms of life in such a place, over the course of a day and over the course of a year. I have read enough books set in monasteries (many of them murder mysteries, I admit, especially the Brother Cadfael series by Ellis Peters) to be somewhat familiar with the shape of monastic life and worship, but I learned a lot more from it in this novel. It not only describes the songs and prayers, but puts them in the context of particular problems in characters’ lives. There is the young novice trying to figure out if she belongs here, and another who is sure she belongs but not how to convince those in charge that she does. There is the woman (the “main” character to the extent that there is one) who came later in life, and wonders if she can really change her habits of thought and action to meet the monastic ideal. There are crises of health, and the big financial crisis which also exposes secrets that had been long hidden.
It’s hard to put into words the impression the book made on me. This review describes the novel as having taught her “far more about the way of the heart” than Henri Nouwen’s The Way of the Heart: The Spirituality of the Desert Fathers and Mothers. Having read that book myself last year, I am inclined to agree. I have never felt any call to such a way of life, but I am intrigued by the testimony of those who have, fictional or otherwise. The lessons they have for what it means to live faithfully and joyfully are applicable to life in any setting.
Perennial Student 