Publishers Weekly
★ 01/29/2024
In this penetrating debut memoir, former nun Coldstream describes her 12 years in an English priory and the circumstances that led to her eventual departure. Raised in an emotionally chilly family, Coldstream became bereft at age 24 when her elderly father died. After involving herself with various religious groups in an effort to aid her “long passage... across unfamiliar landscape” of grief, Coldstream found comfort in silent prayer at northern England’s Akenside Priory. Inspired by the discipline and ritual she encountered there, Coldstream joined the mostly silent nuns’ ranks. As time wore on, however, her “hospital for wounded souls” turned icy and toxic, with infighting, big egos, and power struggles troubling the waters in which Coldstream initially found solace. After her conflicts with her fellow nuns reached a fever pitch over the course of a decade, the author fled the cloister in the middle of the night. In lyrical, evocative prose (“Time passes in the monastery like ghosts that move through walls; it seeps through cell doors and stony archways, through bone and marrow, imprinting patience and endurance at every touch”), Coldstream opens a window into a reclusive culture, resolutely exposing its problems without losing sight of its virtues. The results will fascinate believers and non-believers alike. Agent: Patrick Walsh, PEW Literary. (Mar.)
From the Publisher
"An immersive, beautifully observed study of the monastic mind, and the forces that can disrupt and unsettle it. Reading it, I felt the gravitational pull of silence and ecstatic connection." - Katherine May, author of Wintering
“A profoundly moving memoir which gripped me . . . It’s about spirituality and asceticism and silence and sisterhood, but also about how flawed human beings can abuse power and how hermetically sealed communities, which should care for and protect their members, can be dangerously vulnerable to threats from inside their walls.” - Mark Haddon, author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, The Porpoise and others
“I admired Cloistered enormously for its lucid evocative prose, but most of all for the sincerity and candour with which Coldstream writes about her faith, as a transformative and intimate relation with God.” - Sarah Perry, author of The Essex Serpent, Melmoth and others
"When she was twenty-four years old, Catherine Coldstream lost her father, who had been everything to her. From the depths of her grief, she set out on a journey of poverty, chastity, and obedience in a Carmelite monastery in an area of outstanding natural beauty. During the following twelve years, Sister Catherine plowed, planted, and harvested vast fields of solitude and faith. There she experienced the power of prayer, the sometimes damaging politics and surveillance of monastic life, the numinous heights of music, and her own sharp intelligence. This incredibly beautiful and moving book is for all of us." - Dr. Carmen Bugan, George Orwell Prize Fellow, author of Burying the Typewriter: Childhood Under the Eye of the Secret Police, Time Being and Poetry and the Language of Oppression.
"This is is a memoir of emotions felt viscerally. But there are also remarkable spiritual insights, intellectual reflections on life and death and, of course, plenty about the intense relationships that developed between Catherine, and the other sisters. Engrossing and moving.” - Belinda Jack, Author of George Sand: A Woman's Life Writ Large and The Woman Reader
"In an era of relentless superficiality, Catherine Coldstream's memoir of her years living as a nun draws us back into the cloistered world of the inner life. It shows us what it is we may have abandoned in our lives of emotional and material dependency: a commitment to hope and faith; the transforming structures of a spiritual imagination. Here are beautifully crafted lessons in spiritual survival; the meditative practice of deep loneliness; of days wrapped in prayer and contemplation." - Sally Bayley, Author of The Green Lady, Girl with Dove, No Boys Play Here and The Private Life of the Diary"
“A mesmerizing memoir of great clarity and nuance, Cloistered is an account of religious life that is as authentically vulnerable as it is poignantly honest. It will transform the perceptions of its readers regarding the unique traditions of convent life, including its struggle and pain as well as its beauty and glory.” - Revd Dr. Ayla Lepine, Associate Rector, St James’s Church Piccadilly, London
“This fascinating, disturbing memoir takes its place in a rich tradition of writing about convent life by ex-nuns, and is distinguished by its passionate, lyrical writing, which perfectly expresses the author's ardent search for meaning, freedom and love.” - Michèle Roberts, author of Cut Out, Paper Houses, Negative Capability and others
