84 of 89 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A rare glimpse into the shuttered world of the cloister, February 22, 2001
This review is from: Through the Narrow Gate: A Memoir of Spiritual Discovery (Paperback)
Karen Armstrong entered a convent as a teenager in the 60's. While all the tumult of the sexual revolution, the Cold War, the Vietnam War seethed in the outside world, Karen was struggling with her difficult and almost medieval novitiate, her classes at Oxford, where her training as a nun conflicted with the scholastic world, and with her health. While Karen sought to cool the passions and desires of the world and become the perfect nun, her body rebelled and she suffered anorexia, fainting fits which were attributed to her emotions (but were diagnosed as epilepsy much later on.) Meanwhile, she achieved scholastic triumphs at Oxford, but at heavy price.
How Karen adjusts to live in the convent, and then to life at Oxford is an amazing story. Her autobiography is unsentimental and honest. This is a fascinating personal story as well as a rare look into a secret world that was forever altered by Vatican II and its reforms.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
100 of 110 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
An insider's look at a cloistered life, May 22, 2003
This review is from: Through the Narrow Gate: A Memoir of Spiritual Discovery (Paperback)
....cloistered in a psychological as well as a physical sense.
Karen Armstrong, a woman of prodigious intellect and talent, a woman who has written seminal books on the subject of religion, goes inside her own personal experience as a cloistered nun in Through the Narrow Gate.
It's not a particularly pretty picture, this story of her seven years immersed in a life full of bleakness, medical neglect, sexual frustration, and mindless negation of intellect. For someone of Armstrong's mind-set, that last privation must have been hardest to bear. Outside the walls of the cloister, meanwhile, the chaos of the 60s was raging, making the life within more inexplicable - and ultimately, irrelevant.
There is one bright, kind, and encouraging Mother Superior, however, who provides the necessary window of light, a person who provides Armstrong with both a reason to stay and a reason to leave the convent.
It's a blessing for us that she did leave and go on to live her life as a scholar, teacher and author. It's almost an equal blessing, however, that she endured those 7 years and writes about it so poitnantly; it makes her presence in the world all the more valuable.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
41 of 44 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Inspiring and Soul-Searching!, January 5, 2000
This review is from: Through the Narrow Gate: A Memoir of Spiritual Discovery (Paperback)
Through a Narrow Gate is a testament to the personal struggle between feeling the faith and wanting to somehow live it, too. I am impressed with her ability to relive the experience while being fair to both sides and making their decisions and feelings make sense, even when they are directly opposing. The most remarkable thing is her feelings about the modern convents given her struggle and her respect for what was. Her respect is contagious - she gave it to me! She, and her experiences, seem to ratify my own even as mine pale against her story. I recommend it to anyone seriously trying to understand God in their own lives and in their own terms.
Help other customers find the most helpful reviews
Was this review helpful to you? Yes
No
