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Beautifully written, and easily read. The story flows out of Anne like she couldn't wait to write it.
While I know our spiritual journeys are personal ones, I can't imagine a life where our closest relationships and life experiences do not significantly play into the unfolding of that journey. Much of her struggle with her religion and spirituality resonated with my own, including a recent return to the religion of my youth, differing only in that I never abandoned my faith in the Almighty, just the R.C. On behalf of bereaved parents, I feel she not only missed the opportunity to provide much-needed spiritual inspiration in light of such an extremely unfortunate and painful event but seemed to go out of her way to avoid it. My only regret in reading this book is that I was disappointed that her daughter's passing merely gets "honorable" mention and then only as a reference for time.
Called Out of Darkness is an excellent account of Ms. Perhaps that is her point entirely and the "still small voice" is solely an inner calling untethered by all things external. While she describes the relationships of her childhood in great detail (immediate and extended family), it became obvious to me that her family relationships as an adult (husband and children) were off-limits. Rice's return to Catholicism and, more importantly, to G-d.
As a fellow bereaved mother, I read this book with fervor anxious to see how her grief may have impacted her spiritual journey. That I am even left to ponder this question is, in my opinion, a tribute to this book. I've never read any of her fiction but she's obviously a prolific writer. Church.
Every day or as often as they passed by, even just to say "hello" to Christ. Personally, I intensely relate to His Passion, so her bringing to me her insight in this was delightfully pleasant and helpful.I'm also impressed with the draw she has toward stigmata as seen in some of the Saints. Proverbs 22:6 Train a child in the way he should go, and when he is old he will not turn from it. She's adept enlivening this world for the benefit of her readers. There was but a line on the loss of her daughter and not a lot of insight to her marriage to poet Stan Rice but she definately acheived her objective with telling her personal well thought out journey of the soul.I found it interesting that Anne, like many Catholics very specifically relate to the Blessed Incarnation of Christ and how she sees Mary and Jesus in His Divine Infancy. Very effectively Anne talks the reader back through time, not only of New Orleans she grew up in, but the New Orleans 'of ' the Catholic Church in the era of her youth. A time when the parishes left their doors unlocked and children especially were drawn inside the hallowed spaces to visit with the Lord on the alter.
It gave me better insight into the interior makeup of other Catholics. Was unaware of post Vat Councils effect on the church she had left behind and was able to eventually return to her partly due to this lack of knowledge on the church's divisive alterations that eventuated while she was busy raising a family in the world of liberalism.Knowing Anne's love for valuable old books I was surprised to learn that she was not always an avid or even good reader and she conveys how she came to understand the world around her in visual and auditory means like through hymns, beautiful religious artwork and archetecture.I'm glad that Anne shared her story with us of her religious and spiritual journey.
I absolutely loved this book. Anymore than she could from it.She experienced the philosophers of Camus or Kant and found the logic to their systems of thought but no substantive nourishing Faith for the soul.
It couldn't have been easy for such an impressionable girl named Howard, but Anne's descriptions of the neighborhoods she was part of and its scenic descriptions at once captures the interest and love for Anne in her Louisiana life of New Orleans. Anne captured that era of church being so tightly intertwined to the persons soul that it really never could go away or stay afar.
I look forward to more books Anne~Thanks :-) I've read probably every novel Anne had written up until this and recognize some of my favorite qualities to her writing seen in this story of her life.
Depicting its traditions and Feasts.
Believer or unbeliever, every soul can derive something worthwhile from this honest story - and `honest' is the word that kept coming back to me - of one soul's search for meaning." Whether Catholic, Protestant, and just ultimately confused, this is a story for all people. "I never knew much of Anne Rice beyond her status as one of the top-name authors of the country. Here she tells her story, and it is a refreshingly honest portrayal of one person's life: her being taught of God through the Catholic life she grew up amidst in New Orleans Louisiana, how she turned completely away from that existence upon entering adulthood, her searching for meaning in life through her life as an author, and her eventual re-introduction to Jesus that drew her back to her Catholic faith."While I cannot say I agree with every opinion and idea she shares, I can say the honesty with which she tells her story is welcoming.
I'm just a casual fan and have read only one or two of Anne Rice's vampire novels. I'm not sure if this reflected her conversion, the very different subject matter, or perhaps a simple need to make some money. The majority of the book is made of childhood reminiscences, mostly of the physical details of churches she attended. I'm sure they were to her, but unfortunately she really wasn't able to communicate that to the reader.
Those are the things that real conversions are made of, in my mind.I am happy I read the book, though, and did get quite a lot out of it. I'd even go so far as to say there was some real blunting of affect throughout the book, which I found rather strange.Her life as an atheist and a writer of semi-occult subjects gets very short shrift. It's quite a leap between the two. (I also thinks she sounds like an interesting person whom I'd love to talk to and get to know). You'd think that would have been the main topic of the book, actually.I also thought her many personal tragedies - including the deaths of her mother (to "the drink"), young daughter, and husband, as well her own brush with death through a diabetic coma - would have merited more attention. I came to this book mostly as a Catholic and as a fan of conversion stories.Unfortunately, I ended up rather disappointed in this effort.
I would have really liked to have seen more on her thoughts about how these two lives of hers interact and intersect. It just seems the book could have been so much more. My guess is trying to recapture those childhood feelings probably led to her returning to the church, but the reminiscences really just weren't all that interesting. You'd think such an acclaimed writer as Rice would have done a better job.In fact, a lot of the writing seemed rather flat and low-key, even a little offhand.
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