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89 of 96 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Smart on the Surface, Brilliant Beneath, September 26, 2005
Full disclosure: I'm a friend of Peter's and even co-authored an earlier book with him. But that's why you should trust me -- I've seen this guy develop as a writer as only a former collaborator can. I always thought he was very, very good -- but who knew he'd write the first really significant book about American Catholicism of the decade? Vows challenges the Church, no doubt. But it also demands of non-Catholics a reconsideration of how faith, faithlessness, and sex converge; how a story of a scandal is really a history of ideas; and how love and ideology clash and reshape one another.
Vows is a smart book on the surface and a brilliant book beneath, a theological treatise well-disguised as a memoir that turns out to be a thriller. His arguments are more subtle -- and more moving -- than a brief against priestly celibacy. They are also natural arguments, which is to say that they emerge for the reader from the flow of a story and not from a didactic declaration. The most stunning achievement of this book is that its intellectual depth is matched so perfectly by its narrative force.
The final chapters of the book, in which Peter's mother, a former nun, hunts down the priest who abused her, are as gripping as a crime novel even as they present original ideas about the meanings of vengeance, justice, the Church as an institution, and the Church as an body of believers, prey to all the same weaknesses and failings as the flesh.
That shouldn't limit this book to those who think about religion. It is every bit as much a story of a family bound together, uneasily, by its loyalty to an institution that rejects it. It's the story of individual lives amidst the swirl of complicated, often dangerous beliefs -- about God, of course, but also about duty and promises and freedom.
Vows is a great and important book.
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29 of 32 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A memoir that's hard to forget, November 28, 2005
Frankly, I didn't expect much from Vows. So many religion-based memoirs end up suffocating the reader with jargon and emotion. Others focus on internal struggles that lead to snooze time.
But once started on Vows, I wanted to keep going. Manseau displays a dazzling array of writing skills, moving flawlessly back and forth between his father the priest and his mother the nun, and from present to past. And Manseau has a gift of seeing the broader context of a story about ordinary people: a young man and a young woman, encouraged to "enter religion" in an era when vocations were higher than they've ever been, before or since, in the US.
Manseau reveals the truth behind the numbers. Some applicants felt truly called to the religious life; others had a little help from well-meaning mentors. And ultimately we learn that his mother's early religious history included stories of abuse that now seem all too commonplace.
A true storyteller, Manseau emphasizes the ironies of his life. By an odd series of coincidences and mistakes, his parents met in Roxbury and married. They remained loyal to the Catholic church, but their children rebelled. Manseau played video games while pretending to attend services - and grabbed a parish bulletin to take home to keep the peace.
The last third of the book presents an unsparing but often hilarious tale of Manseau's encounter with religion during his college years at University of Massachusetts. Manseau should be admired for me keeping awake for page after page of college memories: discarding an archeology major and digging for religion instead of artifacts. He avoids yet another trite "religious journey" story by focusing on the here-and-now, so that striking moments are presented with irony in the context of the mundane. I loved the story of the college student who complains to a roshi about her sore back. "Get a chair!" says the roshi, laughing.
And of course Manseau discovers Thomas Merton, a Catholic author with unique ties to Eastern religion. If any text could convert Manseau, it would be Merton's Seven Storey Mountain. Instead, Manseau ventures to a Benedictine abbey, where he discovers that monastic life is more about mops and shovels than soulful prayer. His vocation question gets settled in a hilarious episode, previously described in a New York Times Lives column.
Ultimately, we get three intricately woven story lines, just as the title promises, and each holds book-quality drama. His mother's horrendous dental treatment creates a vivid image of abuse that's especially horrifying by being so mundane. His father remains idealistic, refusing to give up his priestly status voluntarily. And we get behind-the-scenes glimpses of the abuse scandals that plagued the Boston churches, some involving priests that were seminary classmates with Peter's father.
Their children are shaped by their parents' "ex" statuses. Peter's brother initially feels alienated but later realizes there are advantages when a dad is also a priest. And Peter himself becomes strong, self-aware, independent and open-minded, not to mention an amazing writer.
It is hard to imagine Manseau writing future books that match the intensity and sheer brilliance of this one. But I hope he tries.
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17 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Exceptional, October 31, 2005
"Vows" is the rare book that manages to seamlessly weave personal narrative with the larger issues of the day. Indeed, it explores perhaps the biggest questions we have regarding faith, identity, loyalty, strength, grace and parenthood, and how one family has tried to bring the answers to those questions into harmony.
This is no attack from the outside. Manseau is not an iconoclast for the sake of iconoclasm. Rather he tells the story of the love of his parents and their love of the Church, loving it so much they needed to betray some of its historical dictates in the hopes of creating something even more profound.
It also portrays the complexity of the 1960's as period in which individuals were exploring opportunities to make institutional changes through thoughtful, intellectual challenges. This view is often lost among the clichés of flowerchildren and stock footage of Woodstock.
And lastly, Manseau also pulls off a neat trick, managing to be funny and irreverent without ever losing respect for his subject. Who would think that you could refer to St. Augustine as "Mr. Singing-Farts," with all the honor and esteem due a Doctor of the Church?
It is an exceptional work.
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