Acedia & Me

Kathleen Norris tackles with great acumen the biblical topic of acedia--the inability to care. Norris uses autobiography and academic analysis to demonstrate the term's modern relevance. The book is a smart, compelling read, especially when Norris discusses her husband's suicidal breakdown and acedia's role in her writing. Unintentionally ironic, Norris's narration is as dispassionate and devoid of vitality as the affliction of acedia that she so eloquently details. Norris even misses the punch lines of her own jokes, flatly delivering her own wit as if reading a weather report off a cue card. It was an unfortunate choice to have ACEDIA AND ME read by the author, especially given the topic's relevance to depressed and distracted cultures. J.T. (c) AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine

Starred review from June 9, 2008
In this penetrating theological memoir, Norris (The Cloister Walk
) details her relationship with acedia, a slothful, soul-weary indifference long recognized by monastics. Norris is careful to distinguish acedia from its cousin, depression, noting that acedia is a failure of the will and can be dispelled by embracing faith and life, whereas depression is not a choice and often requires medical treatment. This is tricky ground, but Norris treads gingerly, reserving her acerbic crankiness for a section where she convincingly argues that despite Americans’ apparently unslothful lives, acedia is the undiagnosed neurasthenia of our busy age. Much of the book is taken up with Norris’s account of her complicated but successful marriage, which ended with her husband’s death in 2003. The energy poured into this marriage, Norris argues, was as much a defiant strike against acedia as her spiritual discipline of praying the Psalms. Filled with gorgeous prose, generous quotations from Christian thinkers across the centuries and fascinating etymological detours, this discomfiting book provides not just spiritual hope but a much-needed kick in the rear.

November 24, 2008
Norris's magnificent spiritual memoir of acedia (a complex cousin of depression) gets an uneven audio treatment. At times, Norris's straightforward and monotonous delivery doesn't do justice to the aching beauty of her prose. However, there is a powerful simplicity to having Norris relate her own story, especially since even the most dramatic sequences—such as when her husband disappeared and planned to kill himself—are rendered without the overwrought Sturm und Drang that other narrators might attempt. Her performance is generally dispassionate, her most animated moments not when she is describing her own spiritual journey but when she incisively critiques the narcissism of American culture. The final disc contains a PDF of Norris's “commonplace book” of favorite quotations on acedia, ranging from early church sages like Anthony the Great and Norris's beloved Evagrius to F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ian Fleming. A Riverhead hardcover (Reviews, June 9).

November 15, 2008
Here, nationally best-selling poet Norris ("Little Girls in Church") offers a difficult and intimate, almost naked look at the spiritual state of acedia that may be foreign to lay audiences. Though they may find parallels in their own relationships and/or careers as they listen to Norris probe her husband's and her own slide into this specialized relative of depression, it isn't an easy journey in audio format, as the book requires pauses for reflection and relistenings of certain sections to appreciate and grasp her concepts fully. Norris also uses this forum to address a spiritual void in our culture but ultimately suggests religious healing as the best antidote. Recommended for select audiences of scholars and philosophers. [Audio clip available through us.penguingroup.com; the Riverhead hc was recommended "for religious libraries," "LJ" 9/1/08.Ed.]Joyce Kessel, Villa Maria Coll., Buffalo, NY

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