Behind the Wall

Elizabeth Ann Kuhn
AuthorHouse (2011)
ISBN 9781452065632
Reviewed by Olivera Baumgartner-Jackson for Reader Views (5/11) 

 

“Behind the Wall” by Elizabeth Ann Kuhn was a rarely touching and courageous book, and one that touched me deeply. Having been raised as a Catholic, I clearly remember a visit to a nunnery with my parents. I must have been seven or eight-years-old and I was greatly impressed by two things – the Mother Superior gave us some really fancy chocolate candy and they had this absolutely wonderful library. On the drive home I told my parents that I was also going to be a nun when I grew up, but when my dad told me that nuns have to work hard and spend a lot of time in silence and prayer, my enthusiasm quickly vanished. Yet, I have never completely forgotten the incredible serenity and the feeling of peace I felt during our brief visit.

Unlike myself Ms. Kuhn, or Sister Alfred, as she was known while being a nun, felt a true vocation and she followed her heart to the home of one of the strictest and most restrictive orders in the Catholic church, the Cistercian Order of the Strict Observance, also known as the Trappistines, a non-speaking and extremely hard working order of nuns. Young and frail, she overcame all the hurdles to finally get accepted into the order, and she believed she found her peace and her place in the world. “Behind the Wall” offers the reader an incredibly precious and unusual glimpse into a life that, to this day, is a complete mystery to most of us. Ms. Kuhn entered the monastery in 1958, and spent seven years behind its walls, before she was brutally thrust back into the world, much against her own wishes. As she states in the Addendum, many things have changed since 1965, yet her disappointment with some of the decisions by her superiors still feels very vivid and fresh. I have to admire her resolve in trying to be charitable and understanding, and I think she's done an excellent job on not dwelling on the negative, but stressing that no matter what, she’s still a deeply spiritual as well as religious person.

I have enjoyed “Behind the Wall” enormously. The tiniest details of the monastic existence came to life in everything Ms. Kuhn wrote about. Her writing had the incredibly endearing, child-like quality to it, and I mean that in the best possible sense. It was far from being childish or immature; it just had this bright-eyed, incredibly enthusiastic approach that is most often seen in children, those who have not been told yet that things are often difficult and something even impossible to achieve. Her memories must have been very difficult to share with the world, and she’s done it with grace and elegance.

I would highly recommend this book to anybody who is open to new experiences and new points of view. “Behind the Wall” is a book unlike any I’ve ever read.

Make comment on weblog

FTC Disclosure