Amazon.com Review
Christin Lore Weber's first novel explores three generations of devoutly Catholic women. Living in rural northern Minnesota in the first half of the 20th century, these sisters, daughters, and grandmothers struggle with their relationships with God, their feverishly repressed passions, their erotic memories and longings.
Altar Music boasts some great sex scenes, worthy of
The Best American Erotica. The only problem is that afterward the women are so repentant they shut down. Young mother Kate Pearson becomes "like porcelain under his fingers" before her husband goes to fight in World War II. "She felt how he had touched her just last night and how her flesh fought against her mind for release." Her daughter, Elise, after playing doctor with her friend Margaret, prays "Please, holy Mary, don't let God send me to hell. Please come and tell me God's not mad at me."
The expression and repression of natural sexual drives is what moves this book along. Its title refers to the piano lessons Elise takes from a once-famous concert pianist who gave it all up to marry God. (It's worth mentioning at this point that Weber entered a convent after high school and was a nun for 14 years.) Each chapter is preceded by a lesson from Sister Mary's notebooks: "Repetition is never exact. Develop nuance, subtle shading--Soul." The discipline of the piano becomes a metaphor for the attempt to tame the music of the body--to make it something pretty and recognizable, not furious and consuming. --Emily White
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
From Publishers Weekly
Former nun Weber (author of the nonfiction Finding Stone, etc.) takes a probing and surprisingly dark look at convent life in this evocative debut, which explores congruences and conflicts between sensuality, music and Catholicism for three generations of Midwestern women. Elise comes of age in Minnesota's rugged northern lake district, raised by caring but troubled parents--Michael, a WWII veteran scarred by the physical and psychic marks of battle, and Kate, who has chosen to atone for past guilts by inuring herself to sexuality and love. Elise's maternal grandmother, Meghan, has already abandoned carnal pleasure, settling into a celibate life as the local priest's caretaker after the sudden deaths of her husband and young son. Elise, a piano prodigy, responds to her mother's coldness and her father's grief by taking "the fixing of the world upon herself," becoming deeply religious and electing, at 18, to enter a convent. However, Elise finds that life inside the convent is not what she had expected. She falls prey to an older, sexually manipulative nun, who forbids her piano practice and cuts her off from her family. The deaths of Michael, Meghan and a beloved fellow nun prompt Elise's reconsideration of Catholic dogma and lead to healing self-discovery for both Elise and Kate. Weber articulates a faith that affirms music, sexuality and the natural world, offering a nuanced critique of what she depicts as the church's life-denying impulses. The novel is dense and sprawling, and readers may sense that Weber's ambition in tackling broad themes cannot be sustained. The tone is occasionally preachy or didactic, and some of the episodes are contrived. But the key characters are richly developed, and Weber writes with lyric grace and candor, producing a provocative and moving narrative. 5-city author tour.
Copyright 2000 Reed Business Information, Inc.
--This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.
