Altar Music: A Novel [Hardcover]

Christin Lore Weber (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 2, 2000

In her achingly beautiful and revelatory first novel, Christin Lore Weber, a former nun, explores the nature and power of passion -- sexual, religious, and artistic -- and brings us into a mysterious, cloistered world rarely made public. Set in the wild, rock-and-lake region of northern Minnesota, this is an exquisitely told tale of three generations of strong-willed women and their inner battles to balance personal longings with the disciplines of their church.

Meghan, in the first generation, dismisses the priest's injunctions regarding sex and succumbs to her passion for her husband. But when family tragedy strikes, she believes she has been brought down by the hand of God himself for her sexual indulgence. In the second generation, Kate is so afraid of what God could take away -- "husbands, fathers, brothers, music even. God could take your life if he wanted" -- that she learns to steel herself against any deep emotion or desire, to simply "endure, be faithful, and hope to be spared some small thing she loved, something perhaps God didn't want." By the third generation, the passions that moved her mother and grandmother have converged and intensified in young Elise, who is roused by forces beyond her understanding. She is at once a daughter of the Catholic church, a music prodigy, and a tuning fork for nature's wildness. But upon her high school graduation in 1958, Elise forsakes her musical genius and her family to enter the convent -- a beautiful, exhilarating, disillusioning, and haunting experience that will drive her, ultimately, to consider leaving the church.

Written with stunning lyricism and emotional authenticity, "Altar Music" is a portrait of a nun as a younggirl, a portrait of a family both defined and divided by its religious beliefs, and a powerful story about mothers and daughters. Heart-wrenching and thought-provoking, this novel brilliantly depicts the blurring of the lines between sexual passion, artistic passion, and religious fervor, and the losses we suffer when we try to translate one into another.

Editorial Reviews

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

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.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Scribner; First Edition edition (March 2, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0684868660
• ISBN-13: 978-0684868660
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #3,999,948 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Christin Lore Weber, D. Min., grew up in Minnesota, leaving home after high school to enter a convent. A nun for fourteen years, she taught English and religion in high school and junior college. After leaving the convent, she continued her education, receiving a Master of Arts degree in theology and a doctor of ministry degree. Dr. Weber has been a spiritual counselor, educator, lecturer, chaplain, and the author of several books that integrate spirituality with psychology in everyday life. She continues to write and lives with her husband, author John R.Sack, in the mountains of Southern Oregon.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The Heroine's Journey, February 24, 2000

By 

Roberta L. Wolff "the CAT" (Fort Worth, Texas USA) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Altar Music: A Novel (Hardcover)

ALTAR MUSIC is a love song to the unbroken spirit of the survivor. Weber's characters each become a theme in the melody that fills this book with the music of its title. The story touches the old ways, denial, sacrifice, emotional starvation for the sake of salvation, taking a hard look at this form of religiousity through the eyes of the character Elise, Sr. Michelle.

Weber's prose defines Elise's pain and spiritual starvation vividly. The Author's use of metaphor and the poetry of her image, music transforming from desire to completion, gives insight into the minds and hearts of the three women who sacrifice their womanhood on the Altar of Religious Patriarchy: the maiden-Elise, the mother-Kate and the crone-Meghan, who are this works main characters. As we see the in the story the transformation of Meghan from maiden to mother to crone and keeper of secrets, and Kate's transformation from maiden to physically cold and spiritually frozen mother, so we experience Elise's climb from the trap of institutionalized religion. Her heart's blood is spilled in her gaining of maturity through the heroine's journey. She enters the soul's underworld a naif and returns a knower.

This story contains a wealth of wisdom and insight into the human spirit. I could not put it down.

13 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Struggling to be free, February 18, 2000

By 

Bill Cunningham (North Palm Beach, Florida) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Altar Music: A Novel (Hardcover)

I was swept away by this story. I felt the winter icy cold and the mosquito-rich heat of summer, the scratchiness caused by a woolen habit and the fevered touch of a would-be lover.

But most of all, I felt the author's love and compassion for her wonderfully-realized characters---all of them striving to find meaning and happiness amid the surprises, disappointments and tragedies of life in northern Minnesota.

To me this book is an ode to the unquenchable but expensive hope that leads us to struggle for freedom.

Thank you, Christin.

12 of 14 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Gorgeous writing, repetitive conflicts, February 28, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Altar Music: A Novel (Hardcover)

I was spellbound by the gorgeous and poetic writing of the author, but by two-thirds of the way through was very weary of almost everyone in the book having the very same subject of conflict... sex and horrid guilt about sex within the Catholic faith which resulted in frigid wives, child molestation, priest's drooling over detailed confessions, wedding night brutality, a predatory nun, little girls playing doctor and confessing it. I was so relieved to have the heroine's main conflict to be about self expression versus convent suppression (not sex). I am sorry an editor didn't notice this. Even with this, it is a beautifully written book.