The Tulip and the Pope

June 27, 2005
In July of 1960, 19-year-old Larsen (then Deborah Maertz) smoked a final cigarette before walking through the doors of Mount Carmel convent in Dubuque, Iowa. Inspired by Sister Luke in the 1956 novel The Nun's Story
, she was determined to be a perfect nun, though she somehow overlooked Sister Luke's little problem with the vow of obedience. Along with theology and scripture, she studied posture and movement, hygiene and manners, French and "custody of the eyes" (how to avoid being distracted by one's surroundings). She practiced silence, performed menial tasks and prayed daily, always following her order's rule while increasingly hungering for sensory experiences: "The fabrics I were black and white serge, wool, cotton. There was no crushed velvet, no fleece, no angora, and no slubbed silk." In 1965, after a year of college in Chicago and many visits with her confessor, she decided not to make her final vows. One among thousands of American nuns to leave religious life during the tumultuous 1960s, Larsen is now a writing teacher, poet (Stitching Porcelain
) and novelist (The White
). Affectionate rather than bitter, her memoir is a richly detailed reminiscence of convent life and a sensitive evocation of a young Catholic woman's coming-of-age.

August 15, 2005
Larsen here offers an appealing inside look at life within a convent, explaining the decisions a young woman must make not only in joining a convent but also in leaving it. Broken up into numerous short sections that make for relatively easy reading, hers is an in-depth description of convent life, albeit at times a bit mundane (for example, she describes such activities as brushing her teeth). What is perhaps most interesting and poignant here is the story of a young woman's lifelong religious metamorphosis. In the end, Larsen not only left the convent and got married but also, as she came to see God differently, left the dogmatism of Catholicism. She writes, "God has become for me above all a presence -¬ bent on touting its own rectitude nor on the certainty of conventional positions." It is precisely her journey to, and arrival at, this theological principle that makes this book well worth reading. Recommended for all libraries. -Wesley A. Mills, Empire State Coll., SUNY at Rochester

Copyright 2005 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

August 1, 2005
Acclaimed poet (" Stitching Porcelain," 1991) and novelist (" The White," 2002) Larsen recalls her five years as a member of the Blessed Virgin Mary (BVM) religious order. In 1960, eager to leave the secular world behind, she entered the convent as a wide-eyed 19-year-old determined to practice chastity, obedience, poverty, custody of the eyes, and to give up men, smoking, special friendships, and all worldly possessions. Like many young Catholic women of her era, she began to question the validity of her vocation, eventually forgoing her final vows to reenter a society on the cusp of radical social and cultural changes. Stringing together a series of descriptive vignettes and anecdotes, Larsen has cobbled together a refreshingly respectful memoir of the often-soothing tenor of convent life and the spiritual and temporal range of one young nun's experiences.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2005, American Library Association.)