Wondrous things do happen here, but they take place amidst great tranquility.If I may use cinematic analogies to describes this lovely, odd, short book, it reads like a collaboration between Terence Malick (for framing the story with quiet beautiful natural context) and Jean Pierre Melville (for its objective distance and focus on routine) with a dash of Tarkovskian spirituality.
A rabbit skitters forward in the priest's garden and twitches a radish leaf with its nose before tearing it loose. Ears tilt as it hastily chews and settles over its paws.The story takes places in 1906 at a convent in upstate New York. Mariette is a 17-year-old postulant whose attractiveness and fervent piety inspire diverse reactions from the other Sisters of the Crucifixion, even before she starts to show signs of ecstatic contact with Christ.
Hansen maintains the meditative spirit of life in the convent even as events grow more "wondrous." He conveys the personalities of the nuns and their differing reactions to Mariette with very few words, using the same kinds of telling details as he does for the natural descriptions.
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