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Bezig met laden... The Monk Downstairs (1869)door Tim Farrington
Bezig met laden...
Meld je aan bij LibraryThing om erachter te komen of je dit boek goed zult vinden. Op dit moment geen Discussie gesprekken over dit boek. read this while assessing a failing friendship - something about the author's observations struck me as genuine ( ) Can you imagine a tearful love story filled with as much spirituality as romance? Well, Tim Farrington could, and the result is his well-received 2002 novel “The Monk Downstairs.” Rebecca is a 38-year-old divorced woman with a little girl and a devoted boyfriend whom she doesn't love but who won't stop asking her to marry him. Her ex-husband, who gets Mary Martha on weekends, spends his days surfing and smoking pot. To help make ends meet, Rebecca decides to rent out her small garage apartment. The first person who inquires about it is Michael Christopher, who has spent virtually his entire adult life in a monastery. After differences with his superior, who thought Michael emphasized contemplation over work (as in the gospel story about Mary and Martha), he is now on his own in the real world. He carries all his possessions in a small bag. He gets the apartment, and soon like so many others gets his first job at McDonalds. While the romantic relationship that builds gradually between Rebecca and Michael may seem predictable, the path Farrington takes the couple down is full of surprises. A lapsed Catholic, she doesn't think much of her tenant's contemplative nature either. That is, until his spiritual insights, combined with a gift of servanthood unrecognized at the monastery, help pull her through the crises that soon overwhelm her. An intriguing cast of supporting characters, including Rebecca's irrepressible mother and her playboy boss, add substantially to the story. Farrington, like Rebecca, was a Catholic who lost his way before finding it again. He actually spent part of his boyhood in a convent, where his aunt was a nun. So he knows the territory, and he makes the most of it in this intriguing novel. geen besprekingen | voeg een bespreking toe
Onderdeel van de reeks(en)
Rebecca Martin is a single mother with an apartment to rent and a sense that she has used up her illusions. I had the romantic thing with my first husband, thank you very much, she tells a hapless suitor. I'm thirty-eight years old, and I've got a daughter learning to read and a job I don't quite like. I don't need the violin music. But when the new tenant in her in-law apartment turns out to be Michael Christopher, on the lam after twenty years in a monastery and smack dab in the middle of a dark night of the soul, Rebecca begins to suspect that she is not as thoroughly disillusioned as she had thought. Her daughter, Mary Martha, is delighted with the new arrival, as is Rebecca's mother, Phoebe, a rollicking widow making a new life for herself among the spiritual eccentrics of the coastal town of Bolinas. Even Rebecca's best friend, Bonnie, once a confirmed cynic in matters of the heart, urges Rebecca on. But none of them, Rebecca feels, understands how complicated and dangerous love actually is. As her unlikely friendship with the ex-monk grows toward something deeper, and Michael wrestles with his despair while adjusting to a second career flipping hamburgers at McDonald's, Rebecca struggles with her own temptation to hope. But it is not until she is brought up short by the realities of life and death that she begins to glimpse the real mystery of love, and the unfathomable depths of faith. Beautifully written and playfully engaging, this novel. is about one man wrestling with his yearning for a life of contemplation and the need for a life of action in the world. But it's Rebecca's spirit, as well as her relationships with Mary Martha, Phoebe, her irresponsible surfer ex-husband Rory -- and, of course, the monk downstairs -- that makes this story shine. Geen bibliotheekbeschrijvingen gevonden. |
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Google Books — Bezig met laden... GenresDewey Decimale Classificatie (DDC)813.54Literature English (North America) American fiction 20th Century 1945-1999LC-classificatieWaarderingGemiddelde:
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