Lying Awake [Hardcover]

Mark Salzman (Author)

Product Details

• Hardcover
• Publisher: Alfred A. Knopf; Third Printing edition (2000)
• ASIN: B0028QEC2G
• Product Dimensions: 7.5 x 5.5 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 11.2 ounces
• Average Customer Review: 4.3 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (107 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #6,818,703 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

98 of 101 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A small, perfect novel that blew me away, September 20, 2000

By A Customer

This review is from: Lying Awake (Hardcover)

I read this book in one sitting, and I haven't stopped thinking about it since. It is perfect, amazing, hard to believe it's only 192 pages. Like Kazuo Ishiguro's "Remains of the Day," this novel finds suspense and emotional drama in the smallest details, and it is just as beautifully written. The life in this Carmelite monastery, where speech is almost completely forbidden, comes to life with such full, tactile detail. Most importantly, Salzman manages to write about a crisis of faith without becoming touchy-feely or vague. He goes right to the heart of the matter -- to the heart of this character -- and writes about her dilemma in a way that makes it universal, whether you're religious or not: the search for grace. I was incredibly moved. Salzman continues to amaze with his range. This is his most transcendent work.

41 of 44 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A great hunger, December 28, 2000

By 

Kerry Walters (Lewisburg, PA USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Lying Awake (Hardcover)

Salzman's wonderful novel will haunt you. In sparse, cloister-empty language, he tells the story of Carmelite Sister John of the Cross, a woman whose long hunger for God has finally been filled by three years worth of profoundly changing mystical experiences. One day she's forced to ask herself if the ecstatic episodes for which she yearns are what she ought to be seeking--whether, in short, the great spiritual hunger that's like a "hole in the center of her being" (p. 115) should be stuffed with comforting content or embraced for the resplendent absence it is.

It's significant that Salzman's heroine takes the religious name of "John of the Cross," the great Carmelite mystic who writes of the "nada" of God. Her crisis is John's dark night of the soul, and it also faces all of us who search for God. Sister John's final discovery about the soul's hunger for the Divine is one that may surprise you. But in Salzman's artful hands, it rings absolutely true.

Five stars isn't enough for this book. Nothing short of a National Book Award can do it justice.

28 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars 'All of us will be tested in faith, again and again', September 17, 2001

By 

Larry L. Looney (Austin, Texas USA) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Lying Awake (Hardcover)

Mark Salzman's LYING AWAKE is the story of one woman's test of faith. She is Sister John of the Cross, a Carmelite nun living in a monastery surrounded by the hubbub that is Los Angeles. She has given most of her life to the service of God, and she has been gifted with wonderful, ecstatic visions. Words have poured out of her into her journals -- her poetry has inspired seekers within and without the Order. Now in middle age, she suddenly discovers that the headaches that have accompanied these visions could threaten her life -- and, more devastating than this, they could be indications that her visions are nothing but hallucinations brought on by a medical condition. Her choice is plain but difficult -- if she agrees to the surgery that could correct this condition and possibly save her life, she risks losing the one aspect of her religious life that she has seen as a validation of her Vocation. Not an easy choice.

Salzman's prose is as spare and delicate as any I have read -- and yet it conveys so very much. Life for the cloistered Sisters is revealed to the reader without romanticizing -- in all of its simplicity, hardship and beauty. His descriptions of the nuns' cells, the chapel, the monastery garden all shine with a gentle but firm light -- they all seem so present and real. The emotions that pass through Sister John are just as real -- this journey she is taking is one of the soul, and it is not an easy one. Her journal entries are so spiritually evocative --

'an invisible sun
a shock wave of pure Being
swept my pain away, swept everything away
until all that was left was God.

God awakening.'

In another entry, she describes the dissolution of the Self to the Eternal Will:

'You were here all along.
I pierce the universe.
God pierces me.
I do not think; I am thought.
I do not know; I am known.'

The luminous journal entries attributed to Sister John are alone worth the read -- but there is so much more to be garnered from this marvelous work. The quotation at the very top, another from her journal, is so true for all of us -- particularly in light of recent terrible events. Her journey -- and its resolution -- can inspire us when we need it the most.

This is a book of incredible insight and feeling -- remarkable for its beauty (and frugality) of language. I know that I will find myself returning to it again and again throughout my life. I'm glad it's coming out in paperback -- I can see myself giving a few copies as gifts, and the hardcovers would break me!