Lying Awake

by Mark Salzman

Overview

Mark Salzman's Lying Awake is a finely wrought gem that plumbs the depths of one woman's soul, and in so doing raises salient questions about the power-and price-of faith.

Sister John's cloistered life of peace and prayer has been electrified by ever more frequent visions of God's radiance, leading her toward a deep religious ecstasy. Her life and writings have become examples of devotion. Yet her visions are accompanied by shattering headaches that compel Sister John to seek medical help. When her doctor tells her an illness may be responsible for her gift, Sister John faces a wrenching choice: to risk her intimate glimpses of the divine in favor of a cure, or to continue her visions with the knowledge that they might be false-and might even cost her her life.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781400077755
Publisher:	Knopf Doubleday Publishing Group
Publication date:	12/16/2003
Series:	Vintage Contemporaries
Sold by:	Random House
Format:	eBook
Pages:	192
File size:	777 KB

About the Author

Mark Salzman is the author of Iron & Silk, Lost in Place, and the previous novels The Laughing Sutra and The Soloist. He lives in Los Angeles.

Read an Excerpt

July 25
Saint James, Apostle

Sister John of the Cross pushed her blanket aside, dropped to her knees on the floor of her cell, and offered the day to God. Every moment a beginning, every moment an end. The silence of the monastery coaxed her out of herself, calling her to search for something unfelt, unknown, and unimagined. Her spirit responded to this call with an algorithm of longing. Every moment of being contained an indivisible -- and invisible -- denominator.

She lit a vigil candle and faced the plain wooden cross on the wall. It had no corpus because, in spirit, she belonged there, taking Christ's place and helping relieve his burden.Suffering borne by two is nearly joy. Fighting the stiffness in her limbs, she lifted her brown scapular, symbol of the yoke of Christ, and began the clothing prayer:Clothe me, O Lord, with the armor of salvation. She let the robe's two panels drop from her shoulders to the hemline, back and front, then stepped into the rough sandals that identified her as a member of the Order of Discalced -- shoeless -- Carmelites, founded by Saint Teresa of Avila in the sixteenth century. Purify my mind and heart. Empty me of my own will, that I may be filled with Yours. A linen wimple, with the black veil of Profession sewn to its crown, left only the oval of her face exposed. Mirrors were not permitted in the cloister, but after twenty-eight years of carrying out this ritual every morning, she could see with her fingers as she adjusted the layers of fabric to a pleasing symmetry.Let these clothes remind me of my consecration to this life of enclosure, silence, and solitude. She sat at her desk to read through the poems she had written the night before -- keeping her up until past midnight -- and made a few changes. Then she made her bed and carried her washbasin out to the dormitory bathroom. She walked quietly so as not to wake her Sisters, who would not stir for at least another hour. The night light at the end of the hall was shaded with a transparency of a rose window; its reflection on the polished wood floor fanned out like a peacock's tail.

As Sister John emptied the basin into the sink, taking care to avoid splashing, the motion of the water as it spiraled toward the drain triggered a spell of vertigo. It was a welcome sensation; she experienced it as a rising from within, as if her spirit could no longer be contained by her body.Wherever You lead me, I will follow. Instead of going to the choir to wait for the others, she returned to her cell, knelt down on the floor again, and unfocused her eyes.Blessed is that servant whom the master finds awake when he comes. Pure awareness stripped her of everything. She became an ember carried upward by the heat of an invisible flame. Higher and higher she rose, away from all she knew. Powerless to save herself, she drifted up toward infinity until the vacuum sucked the feeble light out of her.

·   ·   ·

A darkness so pure it glistened, then out of that darkness,

nova.

More luminous than any sun, transcending visibility, the flare consumed everything, it lit up all of existence. In this radiance she could see forever, and everywhere she looked, she saw God's love. As soon as she could move again, she opened her notebook and began writing.

Reading Group Guide

The questions, discussion topics, and suggestions for further reading that follow are intended to enhance your group's reading of Mark Salzman's Lying Awake. We hope they will give you interesting ways to talk about this beautifully crafted novel about a middle-aged nun whose "dark night of the soul" raises profound questions about the nature of faith, identity, and artistic creation.

Introduction

The questions, discussion topics, and suggestions for further reading that follow are intended to enhance your group's reading of Mark Salzman's Lying Awake. We hope they will give you interesting ways to talk about this beautifully crafted novel about a middle-aged nun whose "dark night of the soul" raises profound questions about the nature of faith, identity, and artistic creation.

Editorial Reviews

Mark Salzman's critically acclaimed novel brings to life the mysterious world of the cloister, giving us a brilliantly realized portrait of contemporary women drawn to the rigors of an ancient religious life.

bn.com

A singularly rich and abundant work, and one that plays by its own rules. Unironic and un-self-conscious, Lying Awake is, like the life it portrays, a quiet, stubborn movement against the postmodern grain . . .
—New York Times Book Review

Louis Bayard

In an era of trendy spirituality, Salzman has rendered the real thing. His book should be short-listed for all the literary prizes, but it has the kind of grace that doesn't demand them.
—Entertainment Weekly

Hodgman

Readers interested in lyricism, the bone-beautiful kind that arises from amll thing intensely considered, would do well to pick up Mark Salzman's Lying Awake...the concreteness and economy of Salzman's writing, his eye and ear for tiny, resonant details eventually yield their riches in a clear-eyed vision—not, perhaps, of what God means, but certainly of what it means to be a human being...
—New York Magazine

Daniel Mendelsohn

A deliberate and somewhat plodding account of life inside a Carmelite convent, told with a surfeit of awe by Salzman (The Soloist, 1994; the nonfiction Lost in Place, 1995), who seems to have read too much Rumer Godden for his own good.

Kirkus Reviews

"A lean, seemingly effortless tour de force...a perfect little novel."
—The New Yorker

"Spare, luminous...Salzman makes this cloistered society not only believable, but also compelling."
—San Francisco Chronicle

"A singularly rich and abundant work.... [Salzman has an] ability to convey spiritual states with a lambent clarity."
—The New York Times Book Review

"A satisfying and evocative questioning of faith and art."
—The Oregonian

"Mark Salzman is...a poet, capturing in the pages of Lying Awake, his shining novel about devotion and doubt, a mysticism that reaches back in time to an older tradition, yet dwells easily in the present."
—Los Angeles Times

"A gentle story.... Graceful, lucid and enjoyable."
—Newsday

"Elegant.... Salzman's depiction of Sister John's conflict, convent life and this society of devoted women is a marvelous accomplishment."
—The Seattle Times

"Lying Awake showcases an almost ethereal talent, one that can handle complex ideas with a touch lighter than air."
—New York Post

From the Publisher