An infinity of little hours : five young men and their trial of faith in the western world's most austere monastic order /

Maguire (scholar in residence, Folger Shakespeare Library) gives an account of daily life in a Carthusian monastery, as seen through the eyes of five young men who entered St. Hugh's Charterhouse (Parkminster) in Sussex, England, in the early 1960s. The author gained remarkable access to the monks' experience through her long, painstaking correspondence with them, and from this has created a journal-like account of their journey into Carthusian life. One encounters the young men initially as they begin coming to terms with their possible vocations for this austere monastic life, catching glimpses of the complex blend of idealism, excitement, fear, and uncertainty that brought them to Parkminster. Then, little by little, one gains access to the wide range of feelings (and thoughts) that arise as they actually begin to live the monastic life. This account is remarkable for its honesty and realism. One observes the monks as they adjust to solitude, the cold, the sparse food, the tensions within the community; and also as they gradually learn to pray, as they grow and struggle intellectually (but also morally and spiritually), and as illusions about the life begin to fall away and they consider whether to stay or leave. A strange and beautiful book. ^BSumming Up: Recommended. Upper-level undergraduates and above; general readers. D. E. Burton-Christie Loyola Marymount University

Carthusians are contemplative monastics who live in community but spend most of their days alone in their private dwellings. With a lifestyle similar to that of their 11th-century French founder, they wear hair shirts, practice self-flagellation and eat just one meal a day from mid-September to Easter (though some monasteries reluctantly have begun allowing such luxuries as electricity, hot water and flush toilets). Maguire, a Renaissance scholar married to an ex-Carthusian, examines this living museum of a bygone age by following the lives of five young men who entered St. Hugh's Charterhouse in England between July 1960 and March 1961. As they work, pray and live in solitude, they discover not only God but also themselves. They do not, however, learn much about the rapid changes taking place beyond their walls, and the men who leave the monastery in 1965 find themselves in a strange new world. Through painstaking research including countless phone conversations, 5,000 pages of e-mails and a reunion of the five men in France, Maguire creates a personal, sympathetic and amazingly detailed description of an ancient order and its contemporary adherents, traveling "toward inner space within the confines of their solitary cells." (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

Gripping tale of five young men who entered Catholicism's most rigorous contemplative monastic order. Founded in 1084, the Carthusian order remained virtually unchanged through the Second Vatican Council in the mid-1960s, declares Maguire, scholar-in-residence at the Folger Shakespeare Library. (It is now slightly more democratic, though post-Vatican II members do not generally consider the changes substantial.) Emphasizing prayer, members of the order led very individual lives, speaking rarely, living austerely and having virtually no contact with the world outside the monastery's walls. Drawing upon copious letters, e-mails, conversations with former and current members of the order and several nearly unprecedented visits to the English Carthusian monastery of Parkminster, Maguire recreates the personal stories of five men who entered Parkminster in 1960 and 1961. Her goal is "to capture this slice of history that had been frozen in time for nearly 1,000 years." She does that and more. Her interwoven accounts of the five Parkminster novices convey a deep engagement with their emotional struggles as they grappled month after month with an enclosed world of solitude and silence, encountering, for the most part, only their deepest selves and God. As Maguire describes the psychological pressures that mounted upon these five men, driving some near to madness, the reader comes to understand better the concept of the contemplative lifestyle, and what it demands and promises. The author opens the monastery door, providing a vivid account of the order's lifestyle and worship, while also exploring the inner struggles of that life. A moving look at the human search for communion with God at perhaps its most extreme. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.