In This House of Brede

by Rumer Godden

Book Overview

Bruised by tragedy, Philippa Talbot leaves behind a successful career with the civil service for a new calling: to join an enclosed order of Benedictine nuns. In this small community of fewer than 100 women, she soon discovers all the human frailties: jealousy, love, despair. But each crisis of heart and conscience is guided by the compassion and intelligence of the abbess and by the sisters' shared bond of faith and ritual. Away from the world, and...

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0670400238
• ISBN13: 9780670400232
• Release Date: September 1969
• Publisher: Viking
• Length: 376 Pages
• Weight: 1.54 lbs.

Customer Reviews

Good Book

It takes a while to get into, and it's hard to remember who's who, but once you do get into it, you love it. It is a very interesting book about nuns in a convent, showing the blessings and hardships of that life. I like how each nun had their own past to deal with, their own problems. Very very good book.

Inspires the Contemplative Life (even in the World)

I was given this book a week ago by a professor of mine, and read it with more relish than any book in a long time. A truly lovely book! I have spent a fair amount of time at monasteries and convents, and my sister, about Sister Cecily's age, 24 (but in character much more like Sister Hillary), is a nun in a very traditional community. Godden captures both the realism and the beauty of the consecrated life. I have two responses after reading this book. The first is to become a cloistered Benedictine nun (!), and the second is to give this book to everyone I know to help them understand the reality of life in a convent. Most people cannot begin to fathom why anyone would chose such a life, and more than one person told my sister that they thought she was wasting her life by entering a convent. In This House of Brede provides a beautiful apology for the importance of "being" over "doing". Oh yes, I also had a third response. Reading the book caused in me such a great desire to sing Gregorian Chant that I pulled down my Gradual Triplex and sang for the next hour or so! And now too, as I write this, I am listening to the Benedictine Sisters of Regina Laudis chanting the Office. This is a wonderful book to read for Lent, and I've found it encouraging both my prayer and my work. My biggest dilemma is deciding to whom to give my copy now that I'm finished!

Quiet Comfort

I've enjoyed Rumer Godden's books on many levels for years. As an Anglophile of long standing, I love the "Britishness" of the culture and people of which she wrote. I've also loved the quiet intelligence of her books, which never talk down to their readers. Recently, after dealing with the last illness and death of my mother, I have found in Godden's writings on faith comfort and support. In This House of Brede is her strongest and most complex work, and one I have found particularly valuable during the last few months. Brede Abbey is a Benedictine monastery in the south of England. Its nuns are an enclosed community who devote themselves to constant prayer and worship. The nuns are not saints but very human characters who struggle with pain, temptation, and sundry other challenges: physical, mental, and spiritual. It is comforting to read of their battles and of the faith which sustains them. Godden wrote beautiful, thoughtful, prose, and in any of her books you will encounter engaging and attractive characters. In This House of Brede is her masterpiece.

A Favorite Novel by a Favorite Author

If we lived in the disutopia described in Ray Bradbury's Farenheit 451, this would be the book I would choose to memorize. Any sane person might ask: "Why would someone want to memorize lengthy fiction about cloistered nuns?" Answer: "Because the characters are so real and the writing is so luminous." The main character is Phillipa Talbot, a 40-ish successful career woman who enters an English Benedictine monestary. Author Rumer Godden skillfully weaves several plot lines that tell Phillipa's story as well as the stories of many of the other nuns. Sister Cecily the musician, learned Dame Agnes who becomes Phillipa's bete noir, tragic, silly exaggerated Dame Veronica, a victim of the rigid British caste system, and Dame Catherine who is elected Abbess. The writing is so beautiful--there is one description of the seasons of the year that never fails to move me no matter how often I read the book. In addition, the book contains some of the most fascinating "shop talk" you'll ever read. Godden is a master story-teller, and even if the book contains a jarring Deus ex Machina solution to a serious problem, in the context of monastic life, it is believable.

Masterful

This book shows the rich and full life that was to be had in an abbey. Godden portrays the nuns as human and individual beneath the uniform guise of the habit. Religious devotion is depicted with respect and warmth--a difficult combination, and a rare and welcome perspective in this day and age. Each time I've read it, I've found the book moving and thought-provoking.