The Tulip and the Pope: A Nun's Story

by Deborah Larsen

The story of novelist and poet Deborah Larsen's young womanhood, The Tulip and the Pope is both an exquisitely crafted spiritual memoir and a beautifully nuanced view of life in the convent.In midsummer of 1960, nineteen-year-old Deborah shares a cab to a convent. She and the teenage girls with her, passionate to become nuns, heedless of all they are leaving behind, smoke their last cigarettes before entering their new lives. In the same artful prose that distinguished her novel The White , Larsen's memoir lets us into the hushed life of the convent. She captures the exquisite peace she found there, as well as the extreme constriction of the rules and her gradual awareness of all that she is missing. Eventually the physical world—the lush tulip she remembers seeing as a girl, the snow she tunneled in, and even the mystery of sex—begins to seem to her an alternative theater for a deep understanding and love of God.

Genres: Memoir, Nonfiction, Religion, Spirituality, Book Club, Biography, Biography Memoir

265 pages, Paperback

First published September 6, 2005

Reviews

[Rita Halfscatch]

Interesting view of convent life in the 1960s. but his memoir is still behind the veil. 60s were a time of limited but suddenly not-so-limited opportunity for women who wanted options in life, and our main character/author leaves the convent before taking final vows. Rather stilted prose and a broken sort of structure. Although this authors writes about personal subjects, I am left with no sense of what the day to day reality of her situation must have been like. You can see the penguins behind the glass but not touch, taste or smell anything. Would have been more interesting if she could have had the guts to write about the convet without the approval of her ex-sisterhood. Maybe she would habe been freer to take on the big issues in a more blow by blow sort of way. Ultimately too timid, but maybe an ex-nun of her generation would never be able to write, or even want to write, the much more intersting story that is alluded to in these pages but is never really told.

[Rebecca · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book had a lot of unexplored potential. To be fair, I think writing a memoir about one's time as a nun (after the fact) must be a very difficult task. Karen Armstrong expresses this in her preface to The Spiral Staircase, her account of leaving her convent and a sequel to her memoir of her experiences as a nun (Through the Narrow Gate). Armstrong says:

Writing Through the Narrow Gate, some twelve years later, was a salutary experience. It made me confront the past, and I learned a great dal. Most important, I realized how precious and formative this period of my life had been, and that despite my problems, I would not have missed it for the world. Then I attempted a sequel: Beginning the World was published in 1983. It is the worst book I have ever written and I am thankful to say that it has long been out of print. (xvii)


Deborah Larsen's account of entering the convent of the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary in 1960 is a conflicted memoir--not in her feelings about her time as a nun, but in her choice of narrative voice. She has tried to accomplish in one memoir what Armstrong struggled to do in three. She explains in her author's note: " My remembrance of 1960-1965 never felt like a conventional narrative, thought it had progressions. My sense was more of a string of paper lanterns...lit spottily against the dark along a dock, where some days, even now, waves dash." This explains, but does not ameliorate the odd sense of detachment for the reader.

A lot of value in memoir is hindsight. Larsen's reluctance to allow herself deeper reflection upon the events of the 60s left this reader disappointed. It isn't until Larsen considers leaving the convent that the narrative becomes potentially more interesting. Not only has she been released to re-engage with the world in the memoir, but it seems that Larsen-as-author releases her cloistered style as well and the reader begins to understand the point of the first two-thirds of the book:


If you are capable of pushing, then a you is assumed; you must exist if you can push.
Maybe that was it.
There must be an identity or at least an entity; there must be a you.
Or was it the act of pushing, your choosing, your summoning up courage, created the you? (205)


I'm not sure Larsen's switch in style was conscious, but it makes for a disparate reading experience with the first part of the book.


What Larsen does accomplish however, is a beautiful set of vignettes from both inside and outside the community. She appreciates the nuns' aesthetic sense: "Black became us almost thrillingly, I thought. Clerical, but classy." Moments like this make the reader smile as she recognizes the nineteen year old in the nun.

For some, this memoir will feel remarkably undramatic--Larsen moves from a state of naive obedience to disciplined questioning. However, it is this lack of drama that gives the book a good part of its value. Larsen has demystified the choice to enter a convent, and reveals obedience, chastity, and poverty to be simply another set of options in the lives we choose to lead.

[Francoise · Rating 5 out of 5]

This memoir revists the author's early twenties with the Sisters of Charity of the Blessed Virgin Mary (the BVM's she calls them), an era in which she embraces purity, and enters the cloistes with absolute confidence and a young girl's love for the beauties of the liturgical year. She evokes the sisters' calmness and serenity and their sharp-minded focus I think she shared with them. In her narrative, we clearly feel her basking in the attendant clarity of mind and sprititual purpose that the cloistered life gives her. At the same time, we feel somewhat sharply the loneliness of communal life in which no special friendships are allowed. The islolation is actually cultivated to allow for Silence, a spiritual practice I never really understood until I read this book.

Larsen eventually leaves the convent to rejoin the world, theologically harking back to an early childhood moment she had lying in the garden looking up at the underside of a tulip. She realized that the tulip had no responsibilities but to be itself -- it's life was lived completed outside the domain of the Church and its servants. It was beautiful and generous. Yes it would die, but it did not partake of the terrifying world of sin and punishment.

Though she leaves, it is without bitterness or regret. She depicts her BVM sisters with love and describes the details of a nun's life quite matter of factly. Rather, her departure continues her spiritual journey. Now in her sixties, she describes how she took with her the Presence that came to inhabit her being during practice of Silence.

Larsen is clearly a poet. Here are her final words: "Presence puts a fiery bloom on the green stem of the world. A world to which I have returned."

[Bethany · Rating 4 out of 5]

The Tulip and The Pope is subtitled “A Nun’s Story.” Deborah Larsen took vows as a sister of the Blessed Virgin Mary in the 1960s, and tells the story of her years in the convent here. She did not stay a nun - she left after several years - but nonetheless has valuable insights on the cloistered life. Her writing style is clear and lovely, and she uses metaphors frequently. Though the book discusses many different aspects of Catholicism, it is accessible to people like myself who are Protestant. (Even though I feel I have more knowledge of Catholicism than the average Protestant, having worked at a Catholic school, it is not difficult to understand.) An interesting picture of a life lived apart and then again as a part of the world.

One image I found quite nice: “At one point during the evening Tenebrae service, during Holy Week, all lights in the church were extinguished, every single candle was snuffed out, and the regular adult choir, miles above us in their loft, took hymnbooks and banged on their pews to signify the rending of the veil of the temple at the very instant that the Lord had died.”

[Katie · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a really interesting read that took a turn that surprised me. I felt, after reading the epilogue, that I had so many unanswered questions hanging in the air. Was that the intention?

The story of the cloistered life is one of mystery and many questions. Perhaps Larsen's telling of her own story as a young nun and the unanswered questions was a way of leveling the playing field for what she revealed about her convent life and the convent itself. Regardless, this story goes back in time to 1960, a time where the coals of reformation were heating up in the Catholic Church. This story is one of extreme sacrifice as well as one of deepest humanity.

It is irrelevent whether or not a person knows about Catholicism or the cloistered nun life when reading this story. It is a classic struggle that transcends religion into the deepest realms of our being.

However, as a Catholic myself, I finished reading this book with a sense that Larsen held a slight grudge. I couldn't quite place it, but it was definately lingering...hanging above with all of the unanswered questions.

[Jessica · Rating 2 out of 5]

Not an exceptionally well written book. Her writing style is often confusing and I found myself having to reread the same sentence twice to understand what she was trying to convey.The author also included too many stories/memories that had nothing to do with or were unimportant to the plot. She used too many metaphors. The author really only scrapes the superficial surface of her experience. Each chapter was approx. 2 pages so she never went in depth about any incident she was relaying to the reader. I also found much of the writing preachy and judgemental and borderline insulting. This really could have been a great book if she could have just brought herself to reach deep down and describe her metamorphisis from lay person to nun back to lay person. The entire book felt like a synopsis rather than a study.

[Laren · Rating 3 out of 5]

This is the author's personal experience of committing her life to God by becoming a Catholic nun. She does an excellent job of conveying her sense of isolation within a community, and really lets the reader into her thought processes during her spiritual journey. You can kind of predict the ending, but she brings her personal conflict to life so well that you aren't absolutely sure of it until you get there in the story. I do kind of wish she had eliminated the last chapter since she didn't explain her journey for the forty years between it and the previous chapter. If I weren't Catholic, already knowing the history of the church in those years, I would likely be very puzzled at some of her unexplained bombshells therein.

[Darleen · Rating 2 out of 5]

I regret that cannot recommend this memoir. This memoir was written 40 years after the author's experiences in the BVM religious congregation and yet still reflects the musings and thoughts of her late-teen/early 20-something self that I found much of this book tedious or obvious. I had expected some mature reflections on her earlier experiences and thoughts, but there were too few to make this memoir compelling to me. I was especially disappointed in the mid-book reference to Mary Magdalene as someone who had committed adultery. Given that this memoir was written in 2005 and given the author's academic credentials, I would have thought she would have avoided such an outdated belief that has been repeatedly disavowed by scholars.

[Roxanne · Rating 4 out of 5]

This biography chronicles Deborah Larsen’s experience as a devout young nun in the1960’s and her decision to ultimately leave the convent before taking her final vows. The vivid descriptions of her training and life as Postulate and Novice offer extensive insight into the cloistered life. Short chapters and short sentences give the reader a sense of the starkness and simplicity of the convent. Deborah leaves in a spirit of peace, because she has realized that she can serve God in the world as well as in the convent.

[Nancy · Rating 3 out of 5]

A memoir about a young women who spent six years in a convent in Chicago, but left when she decided it wasn’t the life she wanted. Although I found the book interesting about a life I’ve had no experience in, I also feel Larsen’s style of writing needs to be more thorough. She writes superficially and never really opens up about her feelings. Each chapter is very short—some less than a page. I would have enjoyed the book more if she had fleshed out each topic instead of skimming the surface. She leaves the reader with more questions than answers.

[Christine Rebbert · Rating 3 out of 5]

I guess it says something about this book to note that I had it on my (paper) list of books read, but couldn't remember what it was about at all. Now that I have "refreshed my recollection", I remember liking it some, feeling involved (because what young Catholic girl doesn't go through that phase of wanting to be a nun?), and interested in the picture of day-to-day convent life. Her decision to leave was a little amorphous, and I wonder what might have been left out.

[Norah · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very poetic memoir about what it's like to enter a convent and leave it several years later quite disillusioned. It made me think about the difference between my mother's generation, when many catholic girls did become nuns, and mine, when it is much less common. It was also like peaking into a world I knew nothing about and had never much pondered. Good writing. Interesting insights.

[Kimberly · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book worked for me. I liked the short chapters, the inner focus, and the lifting of the veil on a young nun's life in the 1960s. It probably won't work for everyone, though.

I almost didn't read this book after getting it from the library but as soon as I started, I got drawn in by her story.

[Christopher · Rating 3 out of 5]

The book was not well written but the her experience and transformation was intriguing. I found particularly interesting the fact that her growth came as the outgrowth of the confrontation of her new knowledge and understanding of the experience of her sisters.

[Nina · Rating 4 out of 5]

An engaging autobiography of a young woman's coming of age spiritually. Fascinating to read about the convent system in the 60's and how many girls chose to enter as a pragmatic (often naive) decision versus a spiritual one.

[Mick · Rating 4 out of 5]

This wasn't the best or worst written book I've ever read, however, it was quite a different story from any I've ever read. It was an easy read, not particularly momentous at the end, but certainly a nice story that was thought provoking.

[Julia · Rating 3 out of 5]

So far so good...makes those penguins from high school seem like REAL people!

[Leslie · Rating 4 out of 5]

I love reading about the cloistered life, it's fascinating, it pulls at me, and in all the books, when the nun escapes, I cheer

[Marie · Rating 3 out of 5]

The author writes about her days as a young nun and her decision to leave the convent--does convey the church in a positive light in spite of her departure.

[Stacy Lewis · Rating 2 out of 5]

only OK. No great revelations about religion.

[Book Concierge · Rating 3 out of 5]

A respectful memoir of her time in the convent. None of us in book club thought we could handle it.

[Courtney · Rating 5 out of 5]

I had a hard time putting this book down. Fascinating look at the everyday life of a postulant and later a nun, and what questions of faith can come up even when you feel you have a vocation.

[Patty · Rating 3 out of 5]

This was a story of a girl who entered a convent in the 60's and her story. I enjoyed the book for the most part.

[George · Rating 3 out of 5]

Evolution of a young religious girl to adulthood and a mature view of her relationship with God. Excellent portrait of life in the convent.

[Eileen · Rating 2 out of 5]

OK. Nothing special.

[Arlene · Rating 3 out of 5]

An interesting look at the training of nuns in the early 1960s.

[Jane1812 · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was good. I liked the short themed passages. Would have liked it to continue more after she left the convent.

[~Annaki~ · Rating 3 out of 5]

I have always been utterly fascinated with people and communities who live apart from the world- whether it be nuns, Buddhist monks, a recluse on a mountain top, inmates in prison, the Amish, trappers in the wilderness or any other form of isolated living.

Therefore this was a book I was looking forward to reading. I have read several other books on the subject. This was not the worst and not the best of them, but falls somewhere in the middle.

I felt it could have been a really good book, had there been a bit more "meat" on it, because although I enjoyed the string of vignettes the book is comprised of, and although I liked the references to film and literature, it felt lacking in depth and detail on the most important parts, with run-on sentences and an excessive use of methaphors that often seemed contrived.

An ok read, but not one that I would want to read again and not one I will likely remember a few months from now.

[Cynthia · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very mixed reaction to this book. I enjoy spiritual memoirs and found the story of what it was like to become a nun fascinating and a little endearing. The writing was gentle and insightful. But the end was like taking a giant leap off a cliff and ending with a splat. SPOILER ALERT: it's not surprising that she ended up leaving the convent. But what was so disappointing and tragic is that she left from something--albeit an imperfect something, perhaps--to basically nothing. Her passion for God was gone and replaced by nothing. She had such a deep soul (it seemed) and did nothing (it seemed) with the rest of her life to nurture that beautiful soul. Disappointing and sad.

[Barbara · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed this coming of age memoir. I believe it reads best to a niche audience---Catholic girls born from the early 1940s to the early 1960s. This book requires an understanding of American culture at the time as well as a true understanding of the Catholic Church prior to and immediately following Vatican II.