Saturday, December 20, 2008

Acedia & Me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer's Life by Kathleen Norris

The day I requested Acedia & Me, I was really in the mood for a good memoir. This is another one I didn't finish.

Acedia and Me is part memoir, part expository/exploratory essay. The memoir bits were fine, but in the first 100 pages, there was too much that was essay debating what acedia actually is (based on etymology, religions' definitions, etc.). I didn't care that much about the background of it. A chapter in the beginning, fine. Four chapters of it in the beginning was over the top. By the end of 100 pages, I cared even less about whether it was the same thing as clinical depression (she wants to argue it's not), and I certainly didn't want to read any more about it. I would've read the rest, if Norris had stayed in memoir mode.

I don't want to discourage anyone else from reading this, but this is meant for a more academic audience than I'm willing to be right now.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Oh, I feel so validated now! I gave up on this one after 100 pages as well because I just couldn't get into it. Glad to hear it gets better, but that first chunk was pretty dry.

Anonymous said...

I think I'll skip this one because yours is not the first review like this that I've read.