Madeleine Delbrel: A Life Beyond Boundaries

In his first book, a cheery account of the life of a seemingly benign Catholic activist currently under consideration for sainthood, Mann never makes clear what was special about her. Delbrel did some unusual things in her life, but almost everything is presented in exactly the same breezy style, making it hard to know what is supposed to be significant. When Delbrel was 19, her father, whom she adored, went blind because of diabetes (misdiagnosed as venereal disease, according to Mann) and began abusing his wife verbally and physically. At more or less the same time, Delbrel's fiance dumped her to become a priest and Delbrel (who is described here simply as ``crushed'' by these events) was forcibly committed to a psychiatric hospital. Although as a young woman she was highly critical of religion, Delbrel later found God, apparently through her friendship with ``a party of high-spirited people'' whose acquaintance she made at a dance hall. Eventually she and two friends took up the offer of a pastor to live for free in a house in the Paris suburb Ivry-sur-Seine (which turned out to be a hotbed of Marxism) in exchange for their promise to ``live there and simply be present among the poor and working class neighbors,'' and Delbrel eventually became known for her writing and speeches. Despite the occasional aside about her love of Charlie Chaplin movies and her cutesy gifts to friends, Delbrel remains a cipher here, and Mann's admiring discussion of his subject's patient tolerance of communism (she often gave talks titled ``The Communists, My Friends'') wears thin. (Jan.)