Cloistered: My Years as a Nun [Hardcover]

ANNPRBEST BOOK OF THE YEAR

A profoundly moving memoir which gripped me . . . Its 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 ofThe Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, The Porpoiseand others

An astonishing memoir of twelve years as a contemplative nun in a silent monastery.

Cloisteredtakes 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,Cloisteredshows 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. Catherines 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 destructlC.