In This House of Brede

I finished this book last week, so I thought I'd share a few brief thoughts about it. First, a disclaimer: obviously I'm disposed to like this genre more than the average reader might be. :) Up until now, if you had asked me what was the best novel about religious life, I would've said Mark Salzman's Lying Awake. But In This House of Brede by Rumer Godden is my new favorite. The plot is very compelling -- in fact, the first third of the book had me literally unable to put it down until I got to a point where one of the major plot threads was finally revealed. Both the buildup and the resolution of the storylines were very well done. Even though there are a lot of characters in the book, Godden does a fantastic job of breathing life into each of them and making even the most minor of them very real and intriguing. You can also tell that the author spent a lot of time living in a monastery while researching the novel, because she really gets all the details right, from the finer points of chanting the Office to the insights found in the Rule to the unromanticized view of community life (some of the nuns that populate the pages are downright annoying!). On top of all this, Godden has got a lovely writing style that rises to the occasion -- lush and lyrical here and spare and lucid there, depending on the demands of the story. It's a very good read, and I liked it very much. I highly recommend that you pick up a copy at a bookstore or library soon and give it a read youself.