EFR REVIEWS

SNAKE  Praised for its mesmerizing intensity and taut, quick-witted prose,  SNAKE  tells the mesmerizing story of a mismatched couple -- Irene, ambitious and man-crazy, and her quiet, adoring, responsible husband, Rex -- who tumble into marriage and settle as newlyweds on a remote Australian farm. It is amid this unforgiving landscape that Irene and Rex raise their two children. It is here that, as Rex bears silent witness, Irene tends her garden and wrestles with what seems to be her fate. And it is here that their marriage unravels -- inexorably, bitterly, spectacularly. Goodreads.com ★ ★ ★ ★ ☆ * POTENTIAL TRIGGER WARNING :   This novella incorporates themes of abortion and suicide. Australian housewife Irene has for some time grown to feel that she's become uncomfortably locked into a seriously stifled domestic existence. Though she can't deny her husband has proven to be a good and faithful man, she misses the more wild, carefree side ...

Taking a look at these two novels Catholic novelist Deacon Ron Hansen wrote featuring nuns (FYI -- he's also written non-church themed novels, but that's for another post down the road). ******************************* MARIETTE IN ECSTASY The highly acclaimed and provocatively rendered story of a young postulant's claim to divine possession and religious ecstasy. In 1906, a beautiful seventeen year old postulant enters the convent of the Sisters of the Crucifixion in upstate New York. When she begins to bleed from her hands, feet, and side, the entire community is thrown into turmoil. Is Mariette a cunning sham, or sexually hysterical, or does God stalk her like a pitiless lover?  Mariette in Ecstasy  is a stunning immersion into the society of a small convent at the turn of the century, where a mysterious and ultimately harrowing world lies beneath the lovely, placid surface of everyday life. This is an intimate portrait of a fascinating young woman in the gri...