“Sister Maria Ines walked across the courtyard observing everything as if she had never seen it before. The bell tower, the chimneys, the gargoyles on the roofs, the stork nests, the faces on the statues of the saints in the cloister, even the moss on the flagstones and the peeling paint on the doors fascinated her. For her the signs of decay were not simply reminders of the passage of time but the telltale signs of an undying remorse that trailed back to the Fall of Man.”

Book Review:

Review by Devon Shepherd  (NOV 08, 2010)

In his latest book, The Convent, Panos Karnezis hints at the ambiguity that underlies religious faith in the first sentence: Those who God wishes to destroy he first makes mad. (Does he mean mad as in furious? Or does God drive the damned crazy, first?) And so, when a baby boy appears in a suitcase on the doorstep of an isolated Spanish convent a few paragraphs later, I was ready to be led through an oscillating narrative (is he or isn’t he a miracle?), that explored the tensions between faith and reason, independence and obedience, progress and stasis inherent to organized religion. Unfortunately, that’s not the tale Karnezis delivers, and while his minimalist prose wonderfully captures the contemplative rhythms of convent life, and well-wrought descriptive passages, interesting characters and compelling relationships abound, The Convent, which opens with so much promise, ultimately fizzles out because, not only does Karnezis fail to adequately explore the themes he sets up for himself, he commits a narrative sin – withholding key information — that leaves the reader feeling let down (and unduly manipulated) when the whole thing wraps up.

It is the early 20th century. The world has survived the WWI and the Great Influenza Epidemic. Technological progress brings economic prosperity; as the pace of life increases, so does the standard of living, leaving the newly comfortable without the time or the need for religion. As parishes dwindle, the Our Lady of Mercy convent, high in the hills of Spain, crumbles into decay, its school for novices closed for lack of interest. The six nuns who remain are as eager to be forgotten by the world as the world seems to be to forget them. And while no one talks of their past — of the life and name they renounced in taking the veil — each of these brides of Christ has lived a secular life, each has their own story to tell.

Maria Ines is the strict, but fair, Mother Superior of this group. When she’s not supervising prayer, meting out duties, or tinkering with an old Ford, a gift to the convent from Bishop Estrada, she meditates over a picture of a young navy soldier that she keeps in her room with her icons. And while her strange devotion to the photo has been noticed, no one knows anything about her relationship to this man or her secular past.

And so, when Maria Ines tells the sisters that the baby is a gift for her from God — a miracle she can’t say anything more about — and she can’t fail in her duty to protect him, the nuns accept her reticence, and whether or not they actually believe the baby’s a miracle, they’re prepared to obey their Mother Superior. Only one nun, Sister Ana, objects, and sets about convincing the Bishop that Maria Ines is possessed by the Devil.

What Maria Ines is hiding from the convent is that she had an abortion as a girl. After her lover died abroad (the naval officer), Maria Ines convinced herself that the his death was his punishment for his role in their sin. She fully expected (and wished for) God to take her life too, but when He didn’t, she took the veil hoping to redeem herself. She volunteered for missionary work in Africa, and the hardships and privations associated with her job there as a nurse thrilled her. But, a near-fatal bout of malaria sent her back to Europe and the Our Lady of Mercy convent, where every day she prays for a sign, not of God’s forgiveness, but that her redemption is even possible. After all these years, what else could the baby be but the sign that she’s been waiting for, and with her salvation so intimately linked to the child’s well-being, Maria Ines fights to keep him close to her with an energy that can only be described as mad.

However, one of the major faults of the story is that it is too focused on the question of whether or not Maria Ines will be able to keep the baby, while no one seems appropriately concerned about where the baby came from. That no one was excited, or curious, or ecstatic about even the possibility of a miracle in their midst – these six women who’ve devoted their life to the possibility of miracles! — I found odd and disconcerting. The nuns just tacitly seemed to assume that the baby was left at the convent by a woman unwilling to leave him at the overcrowded orphanage.

With that being said, there is something compelling about this book. The story of Bishop Estrada’s attempt to save a condemned intellectual moved me deeply, and there is something poignant about these women and their relationship to each other, and the simple pleasures they create for themselves isolated from the world. And while Maria Ines guilt ultimately drives her mad (ah, so that’s mad as in crazy!) that we never get to hear all these women’s stories is the real tragedy in this book.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 3 readers
PUBLISHER:	W. W. Norton & Company (November 8, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Devon Shepherd
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Contemporary Writers on Panos Karnezis
EXTRAS:	Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Compelling books that hold mysteries, if not miracles: The Last Report on the Miracles at Little No Horse by Louise Erdrich The Miracles of Santo Fico by D.L. Smith

Bibliography:

• Little Infamies (2002)
• The Maze (2004)
• The Birthday Party (2007)
• The Convent (November 2010)

“The sobs grow louder as she trips the outer latch and pushes open the door. She imagines a child caught in an endless tantrum, flailing across the bed or crouched, cornered like an animal. Instead her candle throws up a figure standing flat against the wall, shift sweat-sucked to her skin, hair plastered around her face. When glimpsed through the grille in church the girl had seemed too delicate for such a voice, but she is more substantial in the flesh, every sob fueled by a great lungful of air. The one she is reaching for now stops in her throat. What does she see in front of her, a jailer or a savior? Zuana can still feel the terror of those first days; the way each and every nun looked the same. When had she started to spot the differences under the cloth? How strange that she can no longer remember something she thought she would never forget.”

Book Review:

Review by Terez Rose (JUL 23, 2010)

In 16th-century Italy, a noblewoman of marriageable age had two choices: marriage and children, or reclusion to a convent. With the price of wedding dowries rising ever higher, most noble families could only afford to marry off one daughter. The rest, for a much-reduced dowry, went to the convent. But “not all went willingly,” author Sarah Dunant states in her preface, a deliciously ominous portent of the story to come.

Sacred Hearts is the third of Dunant’s Renaissance Italy trilogy, following bestsellers The Birth of Venus and In the Company of the Courtesan, and it does not disappoint. The year is 1570. Sixteen-year-old Serafina, previously considered the “marriageable” daughter, has been spirited off to the convent of Santa Caterina after forming an inappropriate attachment to her common-born music tutor. Suora Zuana, mild-mannered and scholarly, is the convent’s dispensary mistress who goes to tend to the hysterical, raging Serafina her first night. A friendship of sorts forms after the abbess assigns Serafina to work as Zuana’s assistant in the dispensary.

Serafina, in spite of Zuana’s friendly overtures, is determined to leave, to meet with the music tutor who promised he would come find her. She uses her peerless singing voice, as valuable to the convent as her dowry, as a method of communication with him in the church, from behind the iron grille that separates nuns from parishioners. Having thus far refused to sing, she now astounds all who hear her. As a convent is endowed by its wealthiest patrons when it can produce such sublime music, by singing so beautifully, Serafina has inadvertently sealed her own fate. No convent would ever allow such a songbird to leave.

Serafina’s resistance to her fate, Suora Zuana’s observations, the growing tensions, both inside and outside the convent walls, form the story’s core. From a lesser author, such a story, set entirely within the convent compound, no male characters to speak of, might prove limiting. But Dunant is a master at bringing the Renaissance era with all its glorious, malodorous, visceral details to life. Her genius, as with all good writing, lies in the language, the sensory description, the shadings of light against dark, culling passion and conflict from unlikely sources, imbuing the characters with life.

Sacred Hearts works also as a social commentary, exposing the mores, values, and hypocrisies of a society that puts such emphasis on religion and piety, only to twist it all to accommodate creature comforts. (The wealthy need only subsidize convents and its occupants so the nuns will pray for their souls and thus will all be saved.) It casts illumination on the plight of so many women of the time, shuttled to a convent as a convenience their family and not for any personal feelings of religious fervor. This is not always for the worst, however. Here within these walls, women are allowed to be musicians, writers, composers, nurses, pharmacists. In some ways these women are freer than they would be on the outside. But increasingly strict measures—distressing to some of the nuns and thrilling to the purists—are to come, in the aftermath of the Council of Trent. Music, literature, theatre, the culinary arts, weekly visits from family; the nuns stand to lose much of this.

Suora Umiliana, the novice mistress, is one who embraces and welcomes such measures. She believes only in the power of pain, penitence and prayer. Her followers include Suora Perseveranza, who wears a cinched leather belt studded with nails that pierce her flesh to yield an ecstasy of a different sort, depicted so brilliantly here:

“She keeps her gaze fixed on the wall ahead, where the guttering light picks out a carved wooden crucifix: Christ, young, alive, His muscles running through the grain as His body strains forward against the nails, His face etched in sorrow. She stares at Him, her own body trembling, tears wet on her cheeks, her eyes bright. Wood, iron, leather, flesh. Her world is contained in this moment. She is within His suffering; He is within hers. She is not alone. Pain has become pleasure. She presses the stud again and her breath comes out in a long satisfying growl, almost an animal sound, consumed and consuming.”

Abbess Madonna Chiara is another strong, outspoken character. As lead administrator of the convent, she holds a position of tremendous power and authority for a woman of her time, the sole negotiator with the outside world. Within the convent, conflicts and a challenge to her authority arise in the form of Suora Umiliana and her acolytes, striving for ever more piety and privation. Both Zuana and Serafina are cast in the middle of this tug-of-war, with far-reaching consequences that result in a most satisfying story conclusion.

Dunant refrains, wisely, from applying 21st century sensibilities to these characters and their personal definitions of sanctuary and happiness. Sometimes this felt a little claustrophobic to me—as did the thought of living my days out in a convent, being woken at 2am for the first of eight daily prayer sessions in a chilly, dark chapel. Perhaps I identified too closely with Serafina, trapped in this smaller world, craving the other one, suffocated by the odds of finding freedom. Yet this was a very real order of existence for a great deal of Renaissance women. And Dunant, as she does so well, has made me see these women of history in a new, unexpected light.

Sacred Hearts is an engrossing, enlightening read, sure to please fans of Dunant’s other Renaissance trilogy novels, and earn her some new readers as well.

AMAZON READER RATING:	from 153 readers
PUBLISHER:	Random House Trade Paperbacks (April 13, 2010)
REVIEWER:	Terez Rose
AVAILABLE AS A KINDLE BOOK?	YES! Start Reading Now!
AUTHOR WEBSITE:	Sarah Dunant
EXTRAS:	Reading Guide and Excerpt
MORE ON MOSTLYFICTION:	Read our review of: In the Company of the Courtesan

Bibliography:

• Snow Storms in a Hot Climate (1988)
• Transgressions (1997)
• Mapping the Edge (1999)

Renaissance novels:

• The Birth of Venus (2003)
• In the Company of the Courtesan (2006)
• Sacred Hearts (2009)
• Blood and Beauty: The Borgias (July 2013)

Hannah Wolf Crime Novels:

• Birth Marks (1991)
• Fatlands (1993)
• Under My Skin (1995)

With Peter Busby, writing as Peter Dunant:

• Exterminating Angels (1983)
• Intensive Care (1986)