Evensong [Hardcover]

Gail Godwin (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: February 22, 1999

To read Gail Godwin is to touch the very core of human experience. With inimitable grace and aching emotional precision, this New York Times bestselling author and National Book Award nominee probes our own complexities in characters whose lives oscillate between success and struggle, stoic resolve and quixotic temptation, bitter disappointment and small, sacred joy. Now, in her first novel since The Good Husband, Godwin again translates our everyday existence into soul-touching truths as she brings to brilliantly realized life the people of a small Smoky Mountain town--and a woman whose world is indelibly altered by them.

At the advent of the new millennium, the residents of High Balsam are in desperate need of hope. Economic and social unrest has led to tragedy. For Margaret Bonner, the young pastor of High Balsam's Episcopal church, care of the community is her constant challenge and devotion.

But now, into Margaret's well-ordered life, come three strangers--a firebrand female evangelist with a haunted past; an elderly, itinerant man whose visit to this quiet hamlet may be no accident; and a troubled boy who Margaret's husband, headmaster of a progressive, local school, is determined to save. Soon these explosive personalities will ignite a conflagration in Margaret's marriage and in the depths of her very soul.

Raising profound issues of love, commitment, and the ever-changing landscape of family, Evensong is both graceful and gripping in its story of a marriage struggling to sustain the best of itself in a volatile world. With this engrossing new novel, one of our most gifted and accomplished storytellers gives us an unforgettable portrait of an American town at the century's end--and of the unexpected events that forever shape our lives.

Editorial Reviews

Amazon.com Review

In the tight-knit Smoky Mountain town of High Balsam, several weeks before the new millennium, Margaret Bonner finds herself pondering the notion of marriage. "I was mystified anew by this whole thing we humans do when we take it into our heads to love one particular person," she muses. At 33, she is the first woman pastor of All Saints Episcopal Church, and her husband, Adrian, is the headmaster of a progressive high school. The Bonners are in a marital slump--Adrian's self-loathing exasperates his younger, more passionate wife and she can't resist imagining what life would be like without him. Yet as the end of the century approaches, they are forced to turn their attention outward and respond to the escalating needs of their North Carolina community. The appearance of three colorful misfits brings matters to a head. Grace Munger, an aggressive fundamentalist Christian, is on a crusade to organize a "Millennium Birthday March for Jesus"; Brother Tony, a chatty 80-year-old itinerant who's taken up the life of a Benedictine monk, has a particular interest in Adrian; and Chase, a 16-year-old delinquent, harbors a thirst for liquor, with calamitous consequences. In her sequel to Father Melancholy's Daughter, Gail Godwin expertly traces the contours of faith, compassion, and loyalty in an isolated community on the brink of change. --Rebecca Robinson

From Publishers Weekly

Godwin's latest novel is as comforting and evocative as its title. It's striking, at a time when so many books on spirituality are flooding the market, that so few novelists of skill and perceptiveness seem drawn to religion as a subject. Susan Howatch is one, of course, but Godwin has surely scored some kind of first in making her heroine here a female Anglican minister. Margaret Bonner, whom Godwin admirers will remember as the subject of Father Melancholy's Daughter, is now the pastor at All Saints High Balsam, a parish set in a conservative little resort community high in the Smokies in Western North Carolina. She married the much older Adrian Bonner, who is struggling as headmaster of a local boys' school, and who is apparently still daunted by thoughts of Margaret's youthful fling with Ben MacGruder, now a noted pop singer. Into their lives, as they approach the millennium (the book is set a year from now, at Advent 1999) comes Tony, a strange old man with dyed hair who represents himself as a monk on the move; Grace Munger, a local woman with a grim past who has set up as an evangelical revivalist and seeks Margaret's participation in an end-time parade to bring salvation and healing to the mountains; and Chase Zorn, a bright but self-destructive orphaned youngster who is a student at Adrian's school. Among a welter of conflicting emotions and loyalties, Margaret somehow keeps her sanity, even her serenity, intact, and learns to put together a long and loving life with a daughter born out of the sorrows of that strange and dramatic time. The carefully researched details of a woman minister's daily rituals are fascinating, and Godwin offers her usual insights into her characters' shifting feelings, compounded of psychological astuteness and keen empathy. Gracefully written and embracing a worldly but genuine sense of goodness and human possibility, this kind of book is rare these days. 75,000 first printing; BOMC and QPB selections.
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 405 pages
• Publisher: Ballantine Books; 1st edition (February 22, 1999)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0345372441
• ISBN-13: 978-0345372444
• Product Dimensions: 9.3 x 6.3 x 1.7 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.6 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 3.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (44 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #378,917 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Gail Godwin is a three-time National Book Award finalist and the bestselling author of twelve critically acclaimed novels, including Unfinished Desires, A Mother and Two Daughters, Violet Clay, Father Melancholy's Daughter, Evensong, The Good Husband, and Evenings at Five. She is also the author of The Making of a Writer: Journals, 1961--1963, the first of two volumes, edited by Rob Neufeld. She has received a Guggenheim Fellowship, National Endowment for the Arts grants for both fiction and libretto writing, and the Award in Literature from the American Academy of Arts and Letters. She has written libretti for ten musical works with the composer Robert Starer. She lives in Woodstock, New York.

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

31 of 32 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars RELATIONSHIPS, RELIGION, REDEMPTION, January 18, 2001

By 

Gail Cooke (TX, USA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)    (COMMUNITY FORUM 04)    (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (TOP 500 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Evensong (Hardcover)

Relationships, religion and redemption are the 3 R's in National Book Award nominee Gail Godwin's Evensong, an eloquently rendered, albeit sometimes decelerated, story of a woman's path to spiritual identity.

In this, her tenth novel, Ms. Godwin reintroduces us to Margaret, the daughter in Father Melancholy's Daughter (1991). We are reminded that Margaret was deserted at the age of six by her mother, and raised by her father, a too needy Episcopalian rector who suffered from bouts of depression and "lived by the grace of daily obligation."

Later, either responding to a call or displaying filial approbation, Margaret chooses to follow in her father's professional footsteps. When we meet her again she is attending General Theological Seminary, and has set her sights on Rev. Adrian Bonner, a balding, fortyish, self-denigrating cleric. Margaret is convinced that having each other will make more of them both.

Dropped off at a Catholic orphanage by his parents, Adrian also bears scars of rejection. As a 10-year-old, he sought approval by imitating the institution's director - the young Adrian fashioned a rudimentary flagellum with "strips of rubber from a piece of inner tube," and punished himself daily.

An unlikely candidate for conjugal bliss, a facsimile of Margaret's father? Indeed. It puzzles why Margaret, as astute as she is in the study of human nature, did not see this herself. Only later does she unearth "a flinty bedrock of self-hatred" beneath Adrian's chronic despair. Becoming temporarily impotent, he makes "bitter jokes about December graybeards who took to themselves May brides."

As the world stands ready for Y2K, the Bonners move to High Balsam, a small North Carolina community. Margaret is to be rector of All Saints High Balsam, and Adrian on the staff of a therapeutic high school.

A paradigm American community in economic straits, High Balsam is ripe for an onslaught by Grace Munger, a rabid and rotund evangelist who receives direct instructions from the Lord. Describing herself as a "freelance apostle," Grace says God has mandated a parade - a Millennium Birthday March for Jesus. When Margaret declines Grace's invitation to join her march, the evangelist digs in her booted heels and campaigns to change the young rector's mind.

Two surprising visitors add to the turmoil in Margaret's life. First, there is the appearance of Tony, a "scraggy old customer" who claims to be a monk from the Abbey of the Transfiguration. Margaret feels obligated to invite the 80-year-old to spend the night with them, a stay that becomes days and then weeks.

Tony, it turns out, is as adroit at duplicity as he is at rolling his own cigarettes. By making himself useful, he slowly insinuates himself into the couple's lives.

A second unexpected houseguest is Chase Zorn, a rebellious teenager who has been expelled from Adrian's school, a "volatile boy, seething with intelligence and mistrust, testing to the limit anyone who dared love him."

The addition of these two disparate personalities to a rather benign household proves to be an incendiary mix, both literally and figuratively, when Tony confesses that he is Adrian's father and a forgotten iron sets fire to Margaret's church.

One of the novel's most poignant scenes is found in Margaret's conversation with a young girl who disdains the Bible as a book that tells one how to be good. Margaret explains, "It's a record of people keeping track of their relationship with God over a long period of time.... People go through some pretty awful stages as they fumble toward what they're meant to be."

Moving toward what one is meant to be is at the heart of Ms. Godwin's well articulated tale. Whether defiantly questioning or unquestioningly faithful, Margaret's journey is much like everyman's journey. Evensong may help us along the way.

18 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Gail Godwin continues amaze and fascinate with her skills., October 21, 1999

By A Customer

This review is from: Evensong (Hardcover)

Godwin writes the way Meryl Streep acts; with consummate skill, both natural and cultivated talent and some unearthly ability to slip into a character's mind and body and live there for a frustratingly short period of time. This is the third of Godwin's novels I've read; Father Melancholy's Daughter was right before this, and I thoroughly enjoyed living there with her, and the sorrow that I felt at the end of both books was that I would never get to meet Margaret or Father Gower or Adrian or Tony or even that likeable Gus. It's as if I've just missed them...well, I will have to wait for the next novel to show up to surprise me and thousands of other readers who appreciate such thoughful, tender, realistic portraits of towns and their people. Thank you, Gail.

11 of 11 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Philosophical Jumpstart, February 13, 2001

By A Customer

This review is from: Evensong (Ballantine Reader's Circle) (Paperback)

I read this book on the advice of a friend- a wonderful, sweet, intelligent friend whom I know is much more spiritual than I am. I sort of thought I would be out of my element, but she sent me the book, I love her dearly, so I read it. Reading "Evensong," I found my thoughts even when I was physically away from the book turning to issues and philosophies explored by Margaret Bonner. The idea of a marriage "making more of each other", her thoughts on Bible stories and how they apply to life...it was in many ways my own private philosophy course. Well, not "course," exactly; there was no lecturing, but sort of a prompter. I found the philosophical jumpstart to be a lovely way to pass the gray days of january.

BUT- I rated it 4 stars. Reading the other reviews, I see there is no consensus on what this book is about. It can be about any number of things as the actual action is fairly slow in deference to the descriptions and relationships and philosophies. That part is fine with me. And I agree that the build-up to the millenium in the story didn't quite work. But it is worth the read; just don't be looking for a totally absorbing story line. There is truly beautiful writing in this book-(maybe some places where it shouldn't be, like out of the mouth of a rebellious teenager.) Maybe parts of the story were a little unrealistic, but the insight, the inaction, the relationships were beautifully written and worth the read on their own.