Good coming-of-age story
I first heard of this novel years ago when it was published in England, and as a fan of convent novels wanted to read it, but couldn't get hold of a copy in the US. Fortunately Alibris had it available through a Canadian book dealer. It's a good first novel, if a little uneven in parts, and a little fantastical in the description of the French religious order. It's hard to believe any Catholic order of nuns would have taken in the odd collection of women who show up at the convent in the south of France in the 1960's, including a few oddball Americans. The author, who according to her bio spent some time in an English convent, may not have been aware that during the 1960's the US was still in a vocation boom that had begun in the 1940's and ran until the reforms of Vatican II began to take hold at the end of the '60's. Young American women who wanted to enter religious orders didn't need to go to France, so the addition of the Americans without any explanation is an odd turn in the plot. Otherwise, the characterizations are good; there are some comic aspects, such as the inability of the main character's mother to cope with domestic life, that are entertaining. The too-perfect foil for the heroine is a little too awful most of the time. No one seems ordinary, which I mean as a compliment, and the ending is ambigous, which is more satisfying than a dramatic departure (or leaping over a wall).
