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Excellent writing. This shows if you're well educated, upper class English & have inheritance you can manage your own manias. Not said to dispel her efforts but to read and have empathy for those not having her advantages. Imagine. Bless her for writing this memoir.
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Reading the description of this book I had hoped it would reflect silence. But it feels like a very busy clever book about the pursuit of silence. An excellent writer but just not what I had hoped for. It did not feel peaceful to me. If you want to come away feeling like you've experienced silence or quiet, read Mary Oliver's poetry instead.
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This book was all but overwhelming for me. There were some slow parts (which probably just meant I didn't understand where she was going) but on page after page I had many moments of startling insights. This is a spiritual book. It's about touching and allowing yourself to be touched by God. One of her biggest dilemmas was how to go into her personal silence, meet God, dwell with him to the best of her ability and hear his word. That transcends all experiences of God I would think. She's also practical. She doesn't cut herself off from her loved ones or others she might happen across refusing to speak to them. She even states, I think rightly, that this isn't doable in Western civilization at this point in time. I loved joining her on her journey. The only real disconnect I had was when she, as a writer, felt by emptying herself and allowing more of God in she had little to write about, she'd let too much of herself go. Also, the experiences were ineffable. That hasn't been my spiritual experience. Yes I've felt the ineffable and yes I've felt myself blend more fully with God but, being human and still physical, we still have ego's, no matter how much we'd like to join with our higher power we're still (just?) us. The value for me is by becoming more alive to God and allowing him to be more alive with me, within me; I come back from the ineffable as more of myself, better able to reflect the sacred. And that gives me loads to think and write about, the only caveat being some experiences are so holy that they probably shouldn't be shared with your closest loves ones if with anyone. This was a life changing book for me. Thank you Sara.
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Maitland explores a topic from so many different points of view--I had no idea that silence could be looked at with such a variety of lenses. This is an amazing book to read, absorb and then just sit with. In silence.
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13 of 16 people found the following review helpful
Like several other reviewers, I am not sure I know what I was expecting when I ordered this book. I have always been drawn to silence, monastic retreats, and so on, and fight for silence in my own life, using such low-level techniques as avoiding music, phone calls, etc when I am 'doing my hermit thing.' So perhaps I was hoping that she would give me a few tips on how to incorporate more silence, without radically changing my life---like those oblates who don't actually join the convent but observe some of the practices at home. But it's a very individual book and its experiences don't transfer to someone else. The historical digressions got tedious; the best parts were her own experiences with her mother, her writing, and so on. I did find the discussion of accidie and how it differs from depression to be very good. I thought it would have been more effective if she had said less, say about the romantic 'ramblings' and such. I also got tired of the mantra of Thoreau. I have no idea if this is true but I read somewhere that for all his talk about the woods, he brought his laundry home regularly for his mother to wash. That rather spoiled him for me. (Maybe it isn't true but...)
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A writer recounts her explorations into the nature of silence and the conflict between the social and inner worlds for those trying to add more silence to their lives.
Maitland doesn't hold back. In tones that alternate between bravery and stubbornness, she questions her own motives in retiring from a large part of the social world. She also demonstrates reasonable objectivity when detailing the benefits and possible dangers of a life spent in silence.
I would warn potential readers that Maitland is a lover of primary and secondary sources. She's a scholar as well as a writer. The historical and philosophical discussion can get dense, even turgid in spots. Chapter four, Silence and the Gods, is especially challenging in this respect. And chapter six, Desert Hermits, required a real effort to absorb. I'm incapable of ignoring a footnote, so I spent a lot of time flipping to the back of the book.
A BOOK OF SILENCE is a fascinating look at the contemplative life by a woman who struggles to put her ideals into practice in a society that doesn't particularly value introspection. It isn't an easy read, but it is a worthwhile one.
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This is a wonderful and thought provoking book. Maitland explores silence both from her personal experience, and from the garnered writings, sayings and teachings of others who have either sought silence, or had silence thrust upon them.
Inevitably, many of the chosen experiences of silence come from those who sought silence and or solitude (as she points out, the two are not necessarily the same) as the route towards an experience of the Divine. Maitland recognises that certain groups of people, while not seeking a closer union with divinity, may encounter experience of profound silence and contemplation - for example, explorers in inhospitable climes. She finds a common felt sense of silence across written accounts of these various experiences, although inevitably it seems that those who consciously search for the experience in spiritual surrender may travel further into the silence.
I was also fascinated by her drawing out the difference between the 'eremitical tradition' - hermits seeking surrender to Divinity and the tradition of solitude as 'the way of the artist', which was part of the Romantic tradition, and has influenced much modern thinking about individual artistic creation. She contrasts the surrender of the ego, the losing of boundary, the merging with all, that is the spiritual way, and the solitary act of artistic creativity which is the fuller realisation of 'Self' - if you like, the clearest realisation of the individual.
I would have liked a little more exploration of the journey towards inner silence - that quietening of the mind's chatter - even if one is in a noiseless environment, and solitary, the full mind can often feel like a crowd of irritating noisy chattering fools! (well, mine can!) She touches more briefly on this, in the final chapter. it is perhaps a more difficult subject to write about anyway, since how can the wordless space be described? To describe it with words is to lose it.
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