The Corner That Held Them

Who knew that NunLit was a genre with a passionately devoted following? Not me, until I read this unique story about a medieval convent, considered one of its classics. Townsend writes brilliantly about the momentous and mundane with the period detail typical of historical fiction, but without the novelistic reins of character hierarchy or narrative arc to steer your mind in a particular direction. When I started to contemplate (quite nunnishly) her authorial choice, I had an epiphany! She recreates for the reader the same sense of distance with which the nuns experienced life! The sisters are concerned with worldly things but they take the eternally long view: events ebb and flow and everybody and everything are significant and inconsequential at the same time. My favorite of the nuns, Dame Isabel, summed up what I think is the crux of the book: “The world was deeply interesting and a convent was the ideal place in which to meditate on the world. She was twenty-three. If she should live to forty, to sixty, her love of thinking would not be satiated.” NunLit has a new convert! (Sorry, couldn’t stop myself.)