Customer Reviews

All We Know of Heaven: A Novel

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Written by a Benedictine monk, "All We Know of Heaven" offers us a glimpse of life in a cloistered religious order, where 19-year-old Paul Seneschal has gone in search of the meaning of life.

Uncertain of his calling to religious life, Paul sees a falling star hurtling towards him in the night sky and takes it as a sign from God. At what he believes to be the meteor's point of impact, Paul finds a small unusual black rock that he keeps as a talisman and apparent validation of his decision. Against his parents wishes, he takes up residence at St. Norbert Abbey in Canada with Cistercian monks.

With all of their foibles and indiosyncracies, the men are more human than holy. Far from retreating into seclusion from the world, Paul, now known as Brother Antoine, finds a microcosm of the world. He meets gentle men who offer evidence of their faith through quiet, simple living. He also meets grumpy old men who yell at him for speaking English instead of French, seemingly bitter men who appear to hate everyone else, a brother who is a pyromaniac, brothers who fall asleep during prayers and irreverently speak when they shouldn't. Most troubling for him personally, he lmust confront his own sexual needs in a life of celibacy.

As the book progresses, we see Brother Antoine mature as a man and as a monk. In learning to accept others and most especially himself, he begins to find the threads to the meaning of life and finds peace with his vocation.

This is an eloquently written book, most astutely written from an insider's perspective. Rougeau's writing is intelligent, thoughtful and entertaining. Overall, a very satisfying book.

Too many of us, I suspect, tend to think that men and women who live cloistered lives are so otherworldly that they walk a few inches off the ground. This view of monastic life is also what makes it so attractive to a layperson worn out by the secular rat race. The monastery seems to offer a haven from everyday hassles, providing a tranquill setting that brings out the best in a person, allows him or her to touch base with what's really important, and get in touch with the inner self and with God.

Bosh! This way of thinking of monastic life is too precious to be true, and one of the merits of Rougeau's wonderful *All We Know of Heaven* is to throw water on that sacred cow. His novel--really, a collection of short story-like vignettes that revolve around the monastic experiences of a young Trappist novice--shows that monks are just like the rest of us: overworked, underappreciated, itchy from sexual urges, idiosyncratic, lovable at times, irritating at others, and always deeply, deeply interesting. The vignettes and their assortment of delightfully oddball characters remind us that the human search for God is always located in a specific place and time and personality. Saints aren't etherial types who walk an inch off the ground. They're folks who, in spite of their oddities and flaws, embrace their hunger for God and remain loyal to it. In reading the stories of these monks, we read stories about ourselves.

A very good book, reminiscent in places of Evelyn Waugh's tone and dry humor. It's not uncommon for monks to write books about the spiritual life, but it's rare for them to write novels. Remy Rougeau has broken that barrier in fine style here.

I am rarely brief in a review, but few words seem better in the case of Rougeau's first work. Anyone who spends enough time in a monastic setting realizes that life in a monastery is about as far from a mediaeval romance as one can get. Rougeau has done a splendid job in telling a down to earth, non-romantic, true-to-life story. Antoine's joys and sorrows are undoubtedly cast in the light of Rougeau's own monastic experience, giving this book both a raw and refined character; very believable. One feels almost like a member of St. Norbert's by the end of this novel.

One to be read from cover to cover, slowly savoring each page, like a fine wine from a monastery cellar.

A review in the New Yorker made me pick up this book. The insider's view to the secret society of men seeking an elevated life, while still being unavoidably human, was too much to resist.

The fact that it reads like individual stories, speaks to the individuality of the stories even though they share a common thread-- much like the men who enter this sort of life.

The writing wasn't heavy-handed, which I was thankful for. In fact there was an elusiveness that was more intriguing than if he had saturated every crevice of the stories.

I'd be interested to see what Mr.Rougeau does for his next book.

I discovered this book via an article written by Rémy Rougeau. Having always had an interest in monasticism I was intrigued by the idea. I immediately picked up a copy.

The novel is almost an anthology centered on the life of a Cistercian, French Canadian monk. Starting with Paul Seneschal taking leave of his parents for monastic life, it follows him as he is initiated into the abbey and eventually becomes Brother Antoine. Each story is virtually independent, centering on certain events and their subsequent revelations.

Paul's interacts with everyone from Buddhist monks to a Royal Canadian Mounted Police officer steadily lead him down the life-long path he has begun toward enlightenment. As he learns and grows the reader cannot help but follow.

This is a wonderful book. Refreshing in a sea of contemporary literature in which simple elegance is a rarity, Rougeau's novel defines the phrase.

This quiet, lovely novel centers around a Cistercian monastery near Winnipeg, Canada and follows the difficult spiritual quest of Paul Seneschal, who, at the age of nineteen, startles his family by telling them that he wants to drop out of college and become a monk.

Paul's reasons for becoming a monk aren't entirely clear, either to himself or to the reader (although a comet streaking through the night sky could have had something to do with his decision). But become a monk he does, and he is renamed Brother Antoine. Although Paul is now an official member of the monastery, several years must pass before he will be allowed to take his final vows. It is on these difficult years that the book concentrates.

Brother Antoine quickly learns that life in the monastery isn't all the spiritual paradise he expected it to be. Monasteries, he sees, have cliques and politics of their own and, against his will, Brother Antoine becomes caught up in them.

Cliques and politics aren't the only problems that besiege Brother Antoine at this crucial time in his life, either. He soon finds both his identity and his faith...two areas of his life in which he formerly felt secure...become areas of grave doubt. With few exceptions, the monks surrounding Brother Antoine are of little or no help to him...in fact, they may be harming him instead. Among their number are pack rats, pyromaniacs, smokers, gossips, drunks and worse. Brother Antoine eventually decides that most of the monastery is populated by frauds and fools. When he reacts to this lack of asceticism among his brothers with a seemingly conceited veneer of "holiness," he is quickly unmasked for who he really is, and not without comic results.

Although there is comedy in this book, it is a quiet comedy and completely lacking in sentimentality...all to the good. Rougeau resists the temptation to contrast Brother Antoine's "goodness" with the quirks and foibles of what could be considered "lesser" monks. In the same vein, he resists the urge to make his saints (and the monastery does contain a few of them) "too good." Ultimately, there are only human beings in this book, whether saint or sinner or somewhere inbetween, and that is what causes the book to stand apart from others like it.

Of course, Brother Antoine is not the man Paul Seneschal envisioned when he entered the monastery, but perhaps he is someone even better. If he is, then, once again, we're not sure why; he experiences no grand epiphany, no religious awakening, but then, how many human beings do? Brother Antoine's goodness, and even what he possesses of saintliness, take him by surprise, for they were born of the more mundane, ordinary things of life and are not at all what he had anticipated.

Readers who need a lot of suspense in their books and a clear problem for the protagonist to solve probably won't like this book. Rather than structuring his story around a more conventional plot, Rougeau has written it so that it has a very episodic quality about it. Everything is linked, yes, but there's no real buildup, climax and denouement. This didn't bother me; I like quiet, contemplative books that deal with the inner life, but those who don't should look elsewhere.

Those who like to get inside a character's mind and heart, to really know him and empathize with his inner struggles, however, will no doubt find "All We Know of Heaven" to be a beautiful and contemplative book, just as I did.

ALL WE KNOW OF HEAVEN is to monastic life what DIARY OF A COUNTRY PRIEST is to priesthood. It tells the story of Paul Seneschal, who in the book becomes Brother Antoine, a Cistercian monk. Like the main character of the Bernanos classic, Brother Antoine is a compelling character because he is ordinary. While he is in monastic life, he is not a mystic. Prayer is at time difficult for him and he even wonders if the prayer routine is necessary even though it is the basis and structure of monastic life. Though he seems suited for life in the monastery, this is due more to his demeanor than religious fervor. He has a fierce battle with celibacy at one point, but the incident is more horrific than heroic. His life is mundane, and there seems to be very little that would compel him to stay in religious life. Still he is dedicated and when he discovers that he has accomplished something by persevering, we feel joy for him and know that he will be a good monk and will be able to withstand the challenges and difficulties of such a life.

ALL WE KNOW OF HEAVEN is more than good fiction. It easily challenges the ideal and bliss-filled life to we could imagine life in a monastery to be. Remy Rougeau brings us into the world of St. Norbert Abbey. While the monastery itself is fictitious, Rougeau was a Cistercian and is still a monk in the Benedictine tradition and we get a sense from the details dispersed throughout the book that places like St. Norbert's exist and the author knows this first hand. We find rather off beat characters in the other monks and few examples of religiosity and piety. We may not discover the holiness we expect, but we do discover humanity and people in an imperfect but sincere search for God and meaning in life. Perhaps this is why this book is so powerful. Even those of us who are not in monastic life try and search fro God and meaning in life. A character like Paul Seneschal, a.k.a. Brother Antoine can speak so powerfully to nay of us and move us is because, we too are searching for the same things albeit in a different manner.

All We Know of Heaven by Rémy Rougeau read like a breath - short and spare. I began reading the small novel on a flight to Seattle, and had it been a longer flight I would have read it straight through in one sitting and thus risked it slipping from my memory, the way small treasures can. Instead I paused in my reading long enough to find my hotel, shop, eat dinner. As I strode the streets of Seattle, the story bubbled in the back of my mind. I finished it that evening in the spaciousness of my hotel room. Alone, without my normal distractions, it simmered. As I went to bed that night having finished Heaven, the story cooled on the window ledge high above the city, and by morning, it had set.

Situated in a Cistercian (Trappist) monastery in Manitoba, this is the story of a young monk's first years of Catholic monasticism. The Cistercians are an order known for their atmosphere of silence, and perhaps this is why Heaven is pervaded by a sweet and gentle quietness.

The story is about the difficulties and demons Brother Antoine (née Paul) meets in those first years at the monastery. It is about the foibles of fellow monks. It is about facing pride, anger, jealousy, bewilderment, lust; and facing these in the silent and remarkably rich world of the farm monastery, among cows and chickens, birth and death.

Populated even by a visit by Tibetan monks and a Buddhist lesson on karma, the story is contemporary. The order is concerned about their dwindling numbers. Reading the book jacket and the dedication to the Cistercian and Benedictine monks with whom the author has lived and worked for many years, I wonder how much of this novel is autobiographical. But if there is a lesson to take from this book and if there is a lesson I take from my own Buddhist meditation practice and study, it is this: The book is both autobiography and about all of our own lives. It is our collective story as frail and human beings. It is about facing and trying to understand ourselves - "full of sound and fury, signifying nothing." Or, as the author remembers from the Psalms when a beloved fellow Brother dies, "A short span you have made my days, O God, and my life is as naught before you. Only a breath is any human existence. You dissolve like a cobweb all that is dear to him."

This book is about the beauty of one small kind gesture, the offering of a Tylenol to a fellow monk in pain, and about the raw confusing ugliness of killing kittens. It is a tale of the beauty and the agony of life.

Spare like a breath, All We Know of Heaven almost slipped by me. But it caught. It is like life: Everything and nothing are here.

- I read All We Know of Heaven on a trip to a software development conference in Santa Fe, New Mexico. I read the book on the way to and in Seattle; the first draft of this review was written on the flight from Seattle to Denver. The conference in Santa Fe occupied all the daylight hours, and there was only one chance on the last day to drive out of town to see the area. The map was bad, one of those sketchy tourist things, and I took a wild shot with darkness near to try to get into the mountains, ending up in Pecos Canyon (in the mountains, but not on the mountains). Right out of the tiny town of Pecos, I was stunned to see a Benedictine monastery nestled in the valley, just beside the winding road. I stopped outside the gate to breathe the place. As if it were centuries earlier, a nun in a white habit glided through a passageway. A bell rang ten times. The nun walked back the way she had come.

This book jumped into my hands a few days ago, and I couldn't put it down. It's not that the plot twists and turns or that the characters are so riveting--though they are, it was just a very beautifully told story. Soft and quiet, like a stream to sit by, compelling in the most understated way. I'm not Catholic, but who hasn't been intrigued by the life of a monk? Growing up on the Canadian border (Buffalo) I was very comfortable and familiar with the French-Canadian theme, if not the religious aspects. I was very taken by the humanity of these people, not saintly and overly pious as I had imagined. Not completely sure of their choices and convictions, any more than any of us are. I simply loved this book and will be sharing it with many friends who may at first glance find it an odd selection. I highly recommend it not only for the rare glimpse of a rare life it offers, but for the questions it provokes in one's own life. I will be looking for future works by this author.

I was drawn to this book by its cover, never suspecting its real treasure within the pages...story after story of a young monk's search for meaning. Human nature as it is, Paul (or Brother Antoine) and his fellow monks are no different than most of us in our desires, needs, and limitations. This is one reason why the book is so captivating -- each chapter tells a story (through Antoine's eyes) of a rather ordinary human experience made extraordinary. The author is a wonderful storyteller. This book is definitely one I couldn't put down until I regretfully turned to the last page! I hope we will have much more from the talented Remy Rougeau.