Special Intentions - Softcover

Kelly, Mary Pat

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1874597715 ISBN 13: 9781874597711

Publisher: Dufour Editions, 1998

Synopsis

Describes the story of the life of Margaret Mary Lynch, a young nun living in Ireland during the 1960s, and her decision to leave the convent and find another path to God.

About this title

From Publishers Weekly:

Depicting the special tribulations, mysteries and joys of the convent, Kelly (Home Away from Home) explores the transformation of a young idealistic "religious" into a secular political activist during the 1960s. The product of an affluent suburb and parochial education, Margaret Mary Lynch is convinced of her vocation and dedicates her life to God by joining the Sisters of Redemption. Her actual experience of life in the occasionally hidebound, arbitrary order gives her second thoughts. After the welcome reforms of Vatican II, the deaths of MLK and the Kennedys, the demonstrations against the Vietnam War and social injustice, and her teaching of black inner-city youngsters, Margaret Mary (now Sister Maura) must decide whether to stay and take final vows or return to the outside world. Margaret Mary is a fine invention, bubbly, dedicated, annoyingly self-righteous and fascinating. Not intended to be even-handed, this treatment gives the reader no opinions or views other than those of the protagonist. However, the vital and uproarious times come through clearly and with humor, as does the bittersweet life of the convent.
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

From Booklist:

The path documentary filmmaker and nonfiction writer Kelly's heroine takes in this first novel is very like the one Kelly took in the 1960s from a large, comfortable Irish home on Chicago's northwest side into the motherhouse of the nuns who had taught her, then back to a racially changing high school on Chicago's west side. Like hundreds of young Catholic women, Margaret Mary Lynch sees her vocation as a way to follow Christ and help the poor. In the end, like many other nuns, she leaves the convent, as Kelly did, to find another way. The novel vividly, respectfully portrays the sincerity and idealism of those young women's choices, and if its narrator has little respect for some of the rules and rule enforcers she encountered, her love and admiration for the religious women who helped form her character are obvious. The '60s are so easy to caricature, but Kelly recaptures the hope and sense of urgency many found in Vatican II and the civil rights and antiwar movements. Mary Carroll

About this edition

• Publisher: Dufour Editions
• Publication date: 1998
• ISBN 10: 1874597715
• ISBN 13: 9781874597711
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 380