cover image Altar Music

Altar Music

Christin Lore Weber. Scribner Book Company, $23 (256pp) ISBN 978-0-684-86866-0

Former nun Weber (author of the nonfiction Finding Stone, etc.) takes a probing and surprisingly dark look at convent life in this evocative debut, which explores congruences and conflicts between sensuality, music and Catholicism for three generations of Midwestern women. Elise comes of age in Minnesota's rugged northern lake district, raised by caring but troubled parents--Michael, a WWII veteran scarred by the physical and psychic marks of battle, and Kate, who has chosen to atone for past guilts by inuring herself to sexuality and love. Elise's maternal grandmother, Meghan, has already abandoned carnal pleasure, settling into a celibate life as the local priest's caretaker after the sudden deaths of her husband and young son. Elise, a piano prodigy, responds to her mother's coldness and her father's grief by taking ""the fixing of the world upon herself,"" becoming deeply religious and electing, at 18, to enter a convent. However, Elise finds that life inside the convent is not what she had expected. She falls prey to an older, sexually manipulative nun, who forbids her piano practice and cuts her off from her family. The deaths of Michael, Meghan and a beloved fellow nun prompt Elise's reconsideration of Catholic dogma and lead to healing self-discovery for both Elise and Kate. Weber articulates a faith that affirms music, sexuality and the natural world, offering a nuanced critique of what she depicts as the church's life-denying impulses. The novel is dense and sprawling, and readers may sense that Weber's ambition in tackling broad themes cannot be sustained. The tone is occasionally preachy or didactic, and some of the episodes are contrived. But the key characters are richly developed, and Weber writes with lyric grace and candor, producing a provocative and moving narrative. 5-city author tour. (Mar.)