Fiction, Reviews

Bearing the Saint, by Donna Farley

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Anyone with an interest in the Vikings knows of the island and monastery of Lindisfarne. The start of the Viking Age is generally dated to 793, when a devastating and unanticipated raid from Scandinavia brought about its sacking. After centuries as a place of sanctuary, the island became from that day on a target, getting hit again and again by plunder-hungry Northmen. In 875 the entire Lindisfarne community, monks, priests, and lay folk, packed up the monastery treasures, including the remains of Saint Cuthbert and a holy book (thought to be the Lindisfarne Gospels), and set off to find a safer place.

They wandered the land like the children of Israel until 882, when a new monastery site was found (it was relocated to Durham some time after).

Bearing the Saint by Donna Farley is a young adult novel dramatizing the adventures and sufferings of that company during its period of homelessness. As the story begins, the hero, a boy named Edmund, is mourning the loss at sea of his fisherman father. Soon he has much more to worry about as he becomes part of the exodus. Over the years that follow he grows up, becomes one of the bishop’s official “saint bearers,” suffers hunger and exposure, has adventures, falls in love, and comes to terms with Danish rule in Northumberland.

I found the book’s pace a little leisurely for my taste. It was episodic, but that’s the nature of this kind of story, so I can’t call that a criticism. The narrative engaged me, but I wouldn’t call it compelling. It did educate me on an aspect of the history of the Danelaw with which I hadn’t been much familiar.

The book is published by Conciliar Press, an Orthodox publisher, and was sent to me by an Orthodox friend. Considering that fact, along with the monastic elements of the story, I would have expected there to be a lot more promotion of monasticism in it than there is. In fact, none of the main characters becomes a monk or a nun in the course of the story, which surprised me. Evangelical readers won’t find the sacramental aspects offensive, I think (unless the idea of saints’ miracles offends them).

I’d say Bearing the Saint is a good, wholesome book that might be especially useful to homeschooling parents who want to teach their children some history.

Reviews

DVD Review: The Whole Wide World

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Here’s a remarkably fine, distinctive film, the victim of criminally bad distribution, which ought to be better known.

In 1933 Novalyne Price, a young schoolteacher and aspiring writer in Cross Plains, Texas, met the most famous man in town, the pulp magazine writer (and creator of Conan the Barbarian), Robert E. Howard. They liked each other, and Novalyne wanted to learn about writing, so they dated for a time (she was his only known girlfriend). Eventually they broke up due to Howard’s volatile personality. In 1936 she went to college in Louisiana and never saw him again. He committed suicide that same year.

But thankfully for fans and scholars, Novalyne had taken up the Boswell-like discipline of writing down conversations she overheard or participated in, including those she had with Howard. She kept these journals for many years.

In the 1970s and ’80s, after Howard had been rediscovered by fans and critics alike, she grew irritated with the amount of armchair psychoanalysis that was being done on her old friend. She organized her journals into a memoir called The Man Who Walked Alone, which came to the attention of filmmaker Dan Ireland. And so the movie The Whole Wide World came to be. Continue reading DVD Review: The Whole Wide World →

Writing

Smith on Words and Wangerin

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Our friend, S.D. Smith (but you should refer to him as Mr. Smith), wrote a little something about the word amazing. At least, that was my take-away.

By way of Mr. Smith’s post, I have learned that the great Walter Wangerin Jr. has a new novel. Out this month is Wangerin’s book, Naomi and her Daughters. Publisher’s Weekly calls it a short, but profound biblical tale come live.

Authors, Religion

Confidence and Encouragement

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Here’s a touching quote from Bonhoeffer’s diary, “Today I encountered a completely unique case in my pastoral counseling, which I’d like to recount to you briefly and which despite its simplicity really made me think. . . .

Authors, Religion

Anne Rice Interview

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Christianity Today interviewed Anne Rice on following Christ without the institutional church (thanks to Jeffrey Overstreet). I’m sure the whole interview is interesting for conversation at the least, but I noticed this paragraph, which our friend Hunter Baker (may his books always be in print) may enjoy:

The damning of the secular culture is upsetting and embarrassing. Secularism in America has done great things. It’s allowed people to live here whether they’re Catholic, Protestant, or Muslim, and it has protected people from the extreme beliefs of their neighbors.

Oh, the soothing influence of secularism. If not for it, we would have slaughtered our neighbors and warred with the nations all in the name of some irrelevant deity.

In related news, Jared Wilson has quit the ninja. I doubt he will live out the year, but I hear ninjas are turning over a new leaf. The tolerating influence of secularism, you know.

Music

When in doubt, post a Sissel video

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Sissel and some guy singing Simon and Garfunkel’s “Bridge Over Troubled Water.”

That song always takes me back. I remember a night in college, when a friend was leaving because he’d flunked out (turned out in the end he had a learning disability). We took him out to our favorite haunt, Mitz & Bert’s diner in Lake Mills, Iowa, where you could get a tremendous hamburger and a big plate of hot-enough-to-burn-your-mouth french fries, plus a chocolate malt, for $1.03 (I had to watch my dollars in those days, so I remember). Before we broke up for the night, somebody played this song on the juke box, and it was like a benediction.

That was some time after my high school graduation, which is on my mind because we’re having a sort of informal class reunion this weekend, down in Kenyon. Every molecule in my body is screaming, “DANGER! STAY AWAY!!!!!!” but I guess I have to go, because I missed the last regularly scheduled reunion.

I’ve never understood why people invite me to things, or register disappointment when I fail to show up. Is it my unsmiling, expressionless face they miss? The way I sulk in the corners and avoid eye contact? My bitter, self-pitying jokes? Or my early exits with lame excuses?

No wonder I can’t talk to people. They’re strange.