- Author: Emma Donoghue
- Where I bought this book: The Strand, New York City.
- Why I bought this book: Donoghue is one of my favorite writers, and this is her latest.
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This slow, meandering narrative is sort of like taking a trip down the Shannon River sometime in the Seventh Century.
But it's a meaningful ride, one of compelling stories and heartbreak, of questions of life and immortality, of whether being alone is the same as loneliness.
It tells of Irish history, both physical and spiritual. It tells of Christian ideology, or the desire to please that version of god above all else, whatever that may mean.
It begin when Artt, a monk at a monastery on the western coast of Ireland, has a vision of himself and two other men finding a more isolated location to better worship God. Artt feels the current monastery has too many comforts -- regular meals, a warm place to sleep, and music during the evening hours. But Artt fervently believes that only by suffering and fending for themselves -- and above all putting God at the center of their lives -- could they properly honor his will.
So he gathers Trian, a naïve young man, and Cormac, who came to the monastery late in life, after his family died in a plague, and the trio sets off to find an isolated rock on Ireland's Atlantic coast.
The novel continues its slow journey, as the men find Skellig Michael -- an actual place eight miles off the coast of County Kerry that was founded by monks sometime in the latter part of the First Millennium. It is what Artt wants, set off from human habitation, a windswept, rocky land that would focus their minds on worshipping, honoring, and praising God.
The basics of this story are real. Skellig Michael, now a tourist attraction, is lonely, cold, and hard to get to. Evidence shows that monks did arrive there more than a thousand years ago, built some stone structures and attempted to open a monastery so they could worship the Christian God more than life itself.
You know, I get the desire to live alone, on some forgotten -- or as yet unknown -- part of the world. And while it's not for me, I get the dream of making a life on one's own, to be self-sufficient, to live among nature, and to sleep under the stars.
But what I don't understand is the need to welcome -- even to seek -- pain and suffering and deprivation to ensure your devotion is real. Artt insists that his monks should serve their God first and foremost, and thus building shrines and worship centers must take precedence over finding shelter and supplies.
Artt wants the days to be spent honoring God, which includes copying out, by hand, the words of the sacred text. And to do this means creating the paper, ink, and writing materials, instead of finding food, water, and other necessities of life. Artt nixes that, saying only that God will provide. To doubt that is to doubt God.
Donoghue explores the questions of what is love and survival. She blends the aspirations of Trian and Cormac to serve God and keep their vow to obey and follow Artt despite his contentions that God wants them to suffer while doing so.
Artt sees their human needs as selfish, while they come to see his philosophy of God as rather pointless.
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