Vows

by Cynthia Linkas

Kirkus Reviews

Find the review online: https://www.kirkusreviews.com/book-reviews/cynthia-linkas/vows-linkas/

 

Two young women struggle with their faith—and the pull of the world—in Linkas’ novel.

 

Welcome to the Academy of the Sorrows of Mary, a convent-cum-prep school run by French Canadian Jesuit nuns who could teach the Marines a thing or two about discipline. The two main characters are Sister Philippe de Marie, a postulant in the order, and Janey Chadderton, a student in the attached prep school. We meet Sister Philippe as Janey’s new English teacher who ditches Tennyson in favor of Gerard Manley Hopkins (yes, this is daring stuff, and the girls revel in it). The story takes place over Janey’s senior year, and the titular vows provide the tension. Sister Philippe is expected to be taking final vows at year’s end. The students are not committed to the religious life (though it is not discouraged), but they are expected to take “Perpetual Vows” at graduation, meaning that whatever the rest of their lives hold, they will remain committed to Christ and the Church. Sister Philippe and Janey fall into something very much like love, with all the Sturm und Drang that goes with it. Janey sees things that she shouldn’t, which really tests her faith. Clearly Janey is based on the author, who went to just such a prep school, and Sister Philippe is likely based upon her older sister, Claudia, the dedicatee. Linkas is a published poet, and her writing reflects this poetic sensibility. After a toboggan flips over, Sister Jean, badly hurt, is described as “a ball of nun” in the snow. Early on, the nuns are described as “like a swarm of insects attacking the arbor, clipping at pride, curbing friendships,” and they “revered the mind, worshiped the soul, ignored the body.” And yet, despite the pious subject matter, this is a warmhearted and at times wondrously funny book.

 

A rare and unforgettable look inside a cloistered religious culture shrouded in obscurity.

TESTIMONIALS

“In Vows, Cynthia Linkas has brought back to life a convent school in the mid-twentieth century, a world so far away from us it may as well be science fiction:  nuns in habits; a century-old web of obligations and sinful infractions; a deep struggle between faith and reasonableness; and poetry meaning so much its enormous gravitational pull could be a matter of life and death.  It not only goes back in historical time but also back to that period of earnest searching that may have been the youth of every one of us, male or female, Catholic or otherwise. The two narrators, a 17-year-old high school student, and nun of 22 about to take her final vows, remind us of the enormous period of growth we all go through during that five year gap, but, as well, both characters, enduring the same torments and ecstasies are fully realized individuals, struggling to be themselves, and—so unusual from the perspective of our era—struggling to subsume themselves into a broader life of sacredness, sacrifice, and meaning. And, of course, in both of them we experience variants of the age-old dialog between the desire of the flesh and need for God. It is a book about driving passions, and young very serious and earnest minds, breaking into little astonishments of poetry in seemingly the most ordinary passages. This is a dramatic story well told with a moving conclusion, and some illuminating truths along the way.”  – Alan Feldman, author of The Golden Coin; Immortality (Massachusetts Book Award); A Sail to Great Island (Felix Pollak Prize in Poetry); The Happy Genius (Elliston Book Award).   

“Although the setting of the novel, a 1960’s convent school, is specific and, to this reader, exotic, the concerns are universal – young women’s hunger for direction, belonging, and meaning. The characters are so well-drawn that I find myself worrying about how they are doing this many years later. Also: did I mention the humor, the pranks, the girls having fun parts of this wise and wondrous book? Fast-moving, deeply-felt; a remarkable debut.” – Miriam Weinstein, author, Yiddish: A Nation of Words, winner of the National Jewish Book Award

“Vows, by Cynthia Linkas, is a sparkling, entrancing book that draws you into a vanished world as strange and magical as any fantasy realm — a convent school in the 1960s, before Vatican II changed all the rules about a life in orders. Three main characters are caught in this moment of transition: Janey, in her senior year, with her yearning for faith and her opposing wish to test all the limits and find her own path; Philippe, a young nun, Janey’s role model, who has taken her vows but struggles to subdue her independence and her deepest desires; and Mere, the mother superior who has lived a life made meaningful by order, discipline, and unwavering belief. The book is full of drama—clashes of personalities, wild teenagers, secret messages, forbidden trysts, deaths and births—and it’s vivid, funny, varied, and richly involving. The stakes are high: after Vatican II will Philippe, with her all-or-nothing nature, become ‘half a nun,’ wearing street clothes and living outside of a convent? Will Janey, like some of her friends at the school, give herself over to the hunger for asceticism and, surprising even herself, take vows? Will Mere, toward the end of her life, be able to navigate a vastly changed world? These are resonant questions: what vows we take, what roads we travel, how we understand our own lives. This is a fabulous read! I loved every minute of it.” – Betsy Seifter, co-author of The Inevitable City, Scott Cowen; After the Diagnosis, Transcending Chronic Illness, Julian Seifter, MD and Betsy Seifter, PhD

“Vows is vivid historical fiction, set in a pre-Vatican II, 1964 convent boarding school, a time and place that no longer exists.  Two stormy spiritual seekers, student Janey and novitiate Sister Philippe wrestle with doctrine and discipline as they chart their separate paths amidst the rumblings of a changing Church. Poet Cynthia Linkas knows this world, and rekindles it with grace, humor and riveting tension.” – Sally Brady, author of A Box of Darkness, Instar, Sweet Memories, and A Yankee Christmas

“Cynthia Linkas’ luminous, heartfelt debut novel takes place at Sorrows Academy, an Ignatian convent school run by French-Canadian nuns. The intertwined stories of Janey, a 17-year-old boarding student, and Philippe, a 22-year-old teaching nun, take place during the 1964/65 academic year—also the final year of the momentous Second Vatican Council. Both young women are wrestling with doubt and faith, despair and hope, attempting to reconcile the life of the body and the tangible world with the more austere realm of the mind and the soul. Their arcs will become entangled, and, at times, stretch nearly to a breaking point. Few writers convey so well both the longings and the contradictions of the spiritual life. Linkas has a keen ear for dialogue, and, even more important, a deeply felt understanding of the kinds of conversations that can leave a person forever changed. Vows thrums with action and has an unforgettable supporting cast of characters—fellow students and nuns, a stern yet compassionate Mother Superior—each so indelibly herself. Linkas also has an eye for the telling detail: for the heat and weigh of habit cloth, the ‘baked bread’ smell of freshly mimeographed pages, for modal chants that ‘sound like hunger,’ for the long sweep of skates on a roller-palace floor, the shuffle of slippers in a cell, and the taste and feel of contraband fried chicken sliding down your throat. What comes through in the end is the undeniable, enduring reality of love, which cannot be counterfeited, either in life or in fiction. I have not read anything quite like Vows. Linkas is a brilliant and caring companion for the journey.” – Patricia Hanlon, author of Swimming to the Top of the Tide: Finding Life Where Land and Water Meet (Bellevue Literary Press, 2021)

“Vows is about passion, an incredible range of passion — the passion for nature, tradition, friendship, a mentor, a place, a time, and for a lover, and in the guiding conversations with superiors…   Vows is lit with passion around the dilemma of trust – well drawn characters trusting one another, the mystery of one’s own path and one’s own curiosity….. Told in language almost on fire, the interaction, growth, secrets, and intimacy shared among the group of girls, their elders, and mentors reveals through dilemmas of passion what it is to be human, to learn, grow, and make choices.” – Kelly Cunnane, author of For You are a Kenyan Child, winner of PEN New Writer award for nonfiction, The Maine Lupine Award and The Ezra Jack Keats Award

“Cynthia Linkas is a poet at heart. I loved the way she characterized Janey’s relationship with her teacher/mentor, Sister Philippe —  a woman of authentic, courageous, compassionate faith, compelling in her love for God, her girls and life!  VOWS is a four-letter word in our culture. And I’m not talking about spelling. This book invites us to enter a sacred and messy place where real life bumps into faith. It is a school where old and young make choices, learn hard lessons, seek forgiveness, and live out their faith while scrubbing floors, roller skating, asking questions, breaking rules, and learning to love God, themselves, and each other.” – Jan Carlberg, speaker, storyteller and author of The Hungry Heart, Daily Devotions from the Old Testament and The Welcome Song, Stories from a Place Called Home

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Cynthia Linkas is author of a collection of poetry entitled Tumbled Time, and publishes widely in literary magazines notably, The Aurorian, Scop and Avocet. A lifelong music teacher, Linkas has taught hundreds of children to sing and performs Renaissance choral music, notably with Convivium Musicum of Boston. She enjoys walking her dogs, time with beloved grandchildren, and making Greek recipes for family and friends.

For more on her life and work, see her website at https://cynthialinkas.com/