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JimZ's Reviews > Haven
Haven
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Any time I think I have it bad I might go back to read this book. Anytime I am annoyed by somebody I might think about the Prior, Artt, in this book and be instantly mollified (well, I could be with Artt right now...oh! Thank God I’m not!).
Three monks on a small craggy island off of Ireland many centuries ago (~600 A.D). One of them, Prior Artt, has a vision that he is destined to build a church away from society. In his dream he sees himself doing this with the aid of a young monk and an old monk. So he selects two from the monastery, and off they go in a crap-ass boat and eventually end up on an island. It’s not like Gilligan’s Island let me tell you.
Prior Artt is a zealot. No doubt many people like him existed. I just wouldn’t want to be under his supervision.
I read this book fairly quickly and skimmed over some paragraphs in which Donoghue was describing how the monks did various things on the deserted bereft island (such as building an altar, building a chapel, building a fire, making a pen out of a bird’s feather). The book was heavy on details on all that and a lot more and I guess I got a bit bored, and hence my skimming. 😏
But I had an overall good impression of the book and was satisfied with the ending. 3.5 stars
Note:
� Margaret Atwood and Sarah Moss liked the book a lot...they had enthusiastic blurbs on the back cover of the book)
Reviews
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Three monks on a small craggy island off of Ireland many centuries ago (~600 A.D). One of them, Prior Artt, has a vision that he is destined to build a church away from society. In his dream he sees himself doing this with the aid of a young monk and an old monk. So he selects two from the monastery, and off they go in a crap-ass boat and eventually end up on an island. It’s not like Gilligan’s Island let me tell you.
Prior Artt is a zealot. No doubt many people like him existed. I just wouldn’t want to be under his supervision.
I read this book fairly quickly and skimmed over some paragraphs in which Donoghue was describing how the monks did various things on the deserted bereft island (such as building an altar, building a chapel, building a fire, making a pen out of a bird’s feather). The book was heavy on details on all that and a lot more and I guess I got a bit bored, and hence my skimming. 😏
But I had an overall good impression of the book and was satisfied with the ending. 3.5 stars
Note:
� Margaret Atwood and Sarah Moss liked the book a lot...they had enthusiastic blurbs on the back cover of the book)
Reviews
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Finished Reading
December 24, 2022
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Antoinette
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Dec 24, 2022 07:14AM
Terrific review, Jim! Sounds very different from her previous books.
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Isn’t it funny—i glommed on to the descriptive “how-to� bits of the book that detailed how the two non-zealot monks figured how to eke out their existence on the island. For whatever reason, it made me feel warm that they were tapping precious skills that I assume had been under-appreciated by others thus far. I wanted to wring that Artt’s neck when he kept putting Trian to work on illumination, where his skills were weak, when he was so gifted in so many other areas. I guess “saints� make bad managers!
Good review. It's on a maybe-one-day list of mine (mental list, for what that's worth - not much), but I think the whole story is far too grim for me to enjoy. Appreciate maybe, but not enjoy.
