I read In This House of Brede by Rumer Godden for the first time quite a few years ago. Right after that I also read another of her books about women religious Five for Sorrow, Ten for Joy. I liked both books a lot and always intended to read more by Godden, but somehow never did. Then some weeks ago, while browsing the DVD-section of Amazon.co.uk I noticed that they had the movie version of In This House of Brede available. I ordered it. Just after my DVD arrived I also read Danielle's review of Godden's The Greengage Summer. I watched the DVD and liked it a lot, and now I wanted not only to read more Godden, but to reread In This House of Brede. In retrospect it was good I watched the film first, because the story had been changed a lot, really a lot! It had been such a long time since I read the book that I had forgotten most of the details. If I had first reread the book and then watched the flm, I would probably not have liked the film nearly as much.
In This House of Brede is a wonderful book. Set in the 1950's and 60's in the Benedictine Monastery of Brede it follows the life of the community of about 90 nuns during a time when society and also the Roman Catholic Church were changing quite dramatically. The book starts with Mrs. Philippa Talbot, a very successful careerwoman, a widow and a convert to Catholicism, saying her goodbyes at work. She is to enter Brede. Through Philippa, and also through various other sisters and nuns of the Brede Abbey, Godden paints a very realistic and very loving picture of the community. These are flesh and blood women with their strenghts and weaknesses striving towards a common goal. Even though Philippa is in a way the main character of the book, it could also be said that the main characher were in fact the community as a whole.
Rumer Godden's writing is beautiful. The narrative moves back and forth in time through the thoughts of the individual women and the things they say. For example in the prologue we follow Philippa from her workplace to her arrival in the village of Brede, where she enters the local pub for a glass (or three :)) of whisky to quiet her nerves and to smoke har last cigarettes, before
"What do you ask?"
"To try my vocation as a Benedictine in this house of Brede."
Then there follows a list of the members of the community at the time of Philippa's entrance and next, in the first chapter, all of a sudden it is four years later and Sister Philippa is nearing her Solemn Profession. I did not remember that the book was constructed this way and felt quite cheated when I first thought that Godden jumped so much forward and was not going to tell us in more detail about Sister Philippa's first few years in the monastery, but I should not have been worried. As the story envolved all was revealed in expertly constructed flashbacks.
I loved the way Godden portrayed the sisters and nuns and all the customs of the community. For example in a traditional pre Vatican II Benedictine Monastery the nuns were called Sister before their Solemn Profession and after that the choir nuns were called Dame whereas the claustral sisters were called Sister even after they had made their permanent vows. Also the entrance ceremony when entering into the novitiate was different for a widow entering than for a virgin. Many customs of religious communities were changed after the second Vatican council in the 1960's, and In This House of Brede tells us also about those changes and how different members of the community felt about them.
In my opinion In This House of Brede is the best novel ever written about a religious community. Godden was able to include so much in the story. There really is everything in there, everything you could think a novel trying to realistically tell about a community of nuns could include: difficulties of older vocations and those entering very young, boyfriends and lovers left behind, personal tragedies, the difficulties to follow the hardest vow of them all i.e. the vow of obedience, healthy friendships between nuns and friendships deemed too particular, new members entering, others leaving, economical difficulties, those who have to learn not to be in charge and those who have to learn to be in charge, the world changing outside the walls of Brede Abbey and the Church itself changing. There really is everything in there and still I loved the book so much that it hardly felt enough! I would have loved to read even more about the House of Brede.
In This House of Brede, whose fictional community was based on the real-life Stanbrook Abbey and St. Cecilia's Abbey, was first published in 1969. The previous year Rumer Godden had converted to Roman Catholicism. While writing In This House of Brede she had, for three years, lived next door to an English Benedictine Abbey. The experience changed her life.
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