And Then They Were Nuns

by Susan J. Leonardi

"Beatrice has probably told you that when someone starts talking about staying, we usually send her home for a while, away from the seductions of these holy hills, so she can decide whether she really... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1563411261
• ISBN13: 9781563411267
• Release Date: June 2003
• Publisher: Firebrand Books
• Length: 205 Pages
• Weight: 0.50 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 6.4" x 7.9"

Customer Reviews

And The They Were Nuns: A Novel

Sweet, engaging, it draws you in. The writing is superb, thoughtful yet crafted with great brevity and a balanced economy of words, which I personally appreciate. I would highly recommend.

Rich and Eloquent and Full of Surprises

The women living at Julian Pines, a monastic abbey out in the sticks of California, lead contemplative lives, help the surrounding community, take in "strays," and exist communally in as much serenity as possible, that is, in "silence, order, peace, prayer, and simple pleasures." Except when someone is having internal struggles or two women are at odds or the summer is too hot or the winter too cold or any number of amusing intrusions from the outside world occur, which is to say, most of the time. In other words, Julian Pines, for all its rustic beauty, hard work, and peacefulness is also a place full of excitement and change. "(T)he essence of life at Julian Pines...was the blank pageness of it, the way you had to invent life every day and eschew the hierarchical assumption that peace and passion were mutually exclusive" (p. 109). At the heart of these beautiful and wonderful stories, it is peace and passion that many of the women struggle to reconcile most--and often with very wry consequences. From a variety of points of view, author Susan Leonardi tells a series of interlocking stories, each of which could probably stand on its own. Taken together, however, they are rich and eloquent and full of surprises. By the end of the book, you feel you know these characters very well. My favorites were Karen, who loves Anne and is the resident priest (despite loud objections from an estranged sister convent and no approval from Rome); Bernadette, whose childhood set her up to be a "helper" to others, a state of mind from which I was very glad she finally escaped; Beatrice, the abbess, who shares a calm, accepting-and sometimes breathtaking-wisdom in many of her encounters; Donna, a veterinarian who relates better to animals than people and actually "sees" people as various animal types; Sharon, the school teacher who came for a brief visit, wrote a series of letters to her fiancé and friends extending the visit, then eventually stayed on permanently; Sierra, the youngster who, at the end of the book, reflects back both the goodness and the quirkiness of the place; and lastly, Anne, the writer, who loves everyone and is so filled with passion and life that I wish I knew her in the real world. One of the cleverest chapters (besides the humorous one entitled "Anne's List of Sixty-Five Good Reasons for Being a Nun at Julian Pines Abbey and One Bad One") has a befuddled Theresa trying to understand the purpose and intent of Anne's fiction writing. Anne has taken the bare bones of one of Theresa's experiences and embellished extravagantly until the story has theme, purpose, and depth-but isn't Theresa's experience anymore. Theresa tells Anne she can't just go and make up things like this, that it's not accurate, that it didn't happen that way, and besides, things have been left out. Anne has a great comeback: "(N)ow you're complaining about my sins of omission. A writer has to be able to leave out whatever she wants. Otherwise, we'd still be stuck on our mo

Warm, funny, wise, unexpected

Susan Leonardi's novel "And then they were nuns" is warm, funny, wise and unexpected. Also fresh and thought-provoking. Each chapter is free-standing but the interlocking characters and progess of time unite the book into a whole. It's an engrossing read, and stays with the reader afterwards. Underneath, it's about living your values. The title is a little flippant, compared to the substance of the book.

Julian Pines Abbey: Contemplation and Wit

This is a book full of wit and understanding, an engrossing story that captures acts of eccentric kindness, gems of rooted wisdom, and is laced with heated sexuality (lesbians, DO NOT go directly to chapter 10) and humor. The reader follows the lives and relationships of the women of Julian Pines Abbey over a period of twenty-some years. Julian Pines is an alternative nunnery situated in the dry, California, Sierra Mountains, envisioned as a kind of supportive collective that eschews mindless regulations and sustains a nice sense of irreverence, while practicing, mostly, a life of seclusion, ecological innovations and, yep, vegetarianism.Even if you never imagined becoming a nun, once you read this book, you well may. I grant you the nunnery is not everyone's idea of a place to "rock on;" but, in a way, this book is not about nunneries, though the Matins and Lauds are faithfully sung, a (woman) priest presides, an abbess councils, and prayers are invoked, this book is about the possible; it is about re-envisioning a meaningful life. It is about friendship, personal conflict, loss and the negotiation of quotidian matters. More simply, it is about the flesh and the spirit, thus making it, at the same time, about faith, psychology, philosophy and, even, the commodified world. That is a lot for a small book to pull off. Thankfully, these meaningful aspects of Leonardi's book are expressed in wonderful, frequently hilarious, tales, rather than rhetoric, or worse, political harangue.Following a modernist's love of digression and alternative narrative patterns, Leonardi's writing continually challenges and awakens. Enjoy the unexpected. At one point, delightfully, even a murder mystery, involving opera divas (!), arises in San Francisco. The mystery is swiftly solved and dispensed with by the Sisters, without guns or fistfights.. And, then, there's letters, recipes, literary references. There's time warps, healing, mysticism. There is one cantankerous nun, who, fed up after over 20 years at Julian Pines, and anxious for "bacon, men and a reliable source of hot water," is so mercilessly mean that you just have to wonder how more complete a book could be. All the players are here. Probably everyone you have ever known is in this book. Too, all your feelings are mirrored. Though there are, of course, some affecting lesbian relationships "stirring," there is universality to the conundrums of these relationships that any reader will find familiar. Only their solutions are novel.The chapter entitled "Anne's Sixty-five Good Reasons for Being a Nun at Julian Pines Abbey and one bad one" is nearly worth the price of the book. It is a response to a meeting in which all the wrong reasons for coming to a nunnery are discussed with Sharon, a visitor who is considering joining the nuns of Julian Pines. (The list follows a very funny and poignant series of letters Sharon writes to her husband, housesitter and friends as her stay at the Abbey stretc

A Delightful Read!

Susan Leonardi has written a delightful novel. Her story is heartfelt and hilarious. And her characters are so real, you feel as if you can reach out and touch them. A great read!