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Through the Cracks: Memories of an Imperfect Biographer
Kathryn Spink is an award-winning and New York Times best-selling author. Her personal journey has taken her from a Himalayan hill station to Cold War European embassy life, from London’s Metropolitan Police to the luxury of the South of France and the slums of Kolkata, from the snows of Moscow to the Sahara sands, and from New York’s United Nations building to freedom marches in apartheid South Africa. In a series of snapshot memories, she provides a personal insight into some of the significant people she has encountered in the course of her writing life, some of them such as Mother Teresa well-known, others less so, but all viewed through the prism of Leonard Cohen’s “There is a crack in everything. Through the crack the light gets in.”
In an age when disagreement can lead not to respectful acceptance of difference and imperfection but to “cancellation”, the reader is challenged to perceive and appreciate the light that can find a way through even the most devastating human brokenness. Through her experience of the human foibles of those she has met along the way, the author demonstrates that there may indeed be “a crack in everything” but that it is through those cracks that light not only enters but can at the same time be radiated.
In an age when disagreement can lead not to respectful acceptance of difference and imperfection but to “cancellation”, the reader is challenged to perceive and appreciate the light that can find a way through even the most devastating human brokenness. Through her experience of the human foibles of those she has met along the way, the author demonstrates that there may indeed be “a crack in everything” but that it is through those cracks that light not only enters but can at the same time be radiated.
268 pages, Kindle Edition
Published October 15, 2025
About the author
Kathryn Spink
49 books7 followersKathryn Spink is the author of several book on the work of Mother Teresa and her coworkers, as well as other inspiring contemporary figures, including Brother Roger of Taize and Bede Griffiths.
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
December 22, 2025
Kathryn Spink had the privilege of meeting and getting to know several of the most extraordinary spiritual figures of the twentieth century, and through her biographies, she helped bring some of them to the awareness of a large public.
This very readable book is part autobiography, part memoirs, and part introduction to some of these personalities. The descriptions of her meetings with these colourful and unconventional people are vivid, and interspersed with sometimes highly amusing personal anecdotes. None of these figures is placed on a pedestal above anyone else. As well as familiar names such as Mother Teresa, Brother Roger of Taizé, Dom Bede Griffiths, Jean Vanier of l’Arche, and Little Sister Magdeleine of the Little Sisters of Jesus, founders of communities who have been an inspiration to large numbers of people, Spink pays equal attention to several less well-known but no less extraordinary figures. The sufferers from poverty, addiction, and severe disabilities, whom many of these people served, are also presented with equal humanity and respect.
The author’s itinerary has taken her to slums and to luxury villas, to conferences at the United Nations or in post-soviet Russia, to participation in an anti-apartheid demonstrations in South Africa, to a retreat at an ashram on the banks of the sacred river Cauvery in Tamil Nadu…. Honest about how inadequate or disorientated she found herself in some of these situations, she is able to see the personal weaknesses and eccentricities of the people she writes about at the same time as their often profound spiritual radiance. All people have cracks, and “that’s how the light gets in”, in the words of Leonard Cohen that are quoted as the epigraph of the book. I would have welcomed a more in-depth consideration of the very serious cracks in the paradoxical life of Jean Vanier, whose abusive relationships with some of the women he accompanied spiritually have become notorious. However, that case is so strange and complex that it would have significantly changed the balance of the book. In any case, Spink’s refusal to entertain a judgmental spirit or to let a person’s failings blind her to the immense good they have accomplished is truly refreshing.
It is perhaps her particular gift to enter intuitively into the insights of these figures and to convey them truthfully and accessibly, without letting her own analysis or personal interpretations get in the way. Early in the book she mentions “the power of silence in encouraging people to talk and the value of enabling them to feel fully and sympathetically heard.” Perhaps it is this attitude that enabled her to win the trust of so many exceptional people and transmit something of their message and charisma to a wide audience.
This very readable book is part autobiography, part memoirs, and part introduction to some of these personalities. The descriptions of her meetings with these colourful and unconventional people are vivid, and interspersed with sometimes highly amusing personal anecdotes. None of these figures is placed on a pedestal above anyone else. As well as familiar names such as Mother Teresa, Brother Roger of Taizé, Dom Bede Griffiths, Jean Vanier of l’Arche, and Little Sister Magdeleine of the Little Sisters of Jesus, founders of communities who have been an inspiration to large numbers of people, Spink pays equal attention to several less well-known but no less extraordinary figures. The sufferers from poverty, addiction, and severe disabilities, whom many of these people served, are also presented with equal humanity and respect.
The author’s itinerary has taken her to slums and to luxury villas, to conferences at the United Nations or in post-soviet Russia, to participation in an anti-apartheid demonstrations in South Africa, to a retreat at an ashram on the banks of the sacred river Cauvery in Tamil Nadu…. Honest about how inadequate or disorientated she found herself in some of these situations, she is able to see the personal weaknesses and eccentricities of the people she writes about at the same time as their often profound spiritual radiance. All people have cracks, and “that’s how the light gets in”, in the words of Leonard Cohen that are quoted as the epigraph of the book. I would have welcomed a more in-depth consideration of the very serious cracks in the paradoxical life of Jean Vanier, whose abusive relationships with some of the women he accompanied spiritually have become notorious. However, that case is so strange and complex that it would have significantly changed the balance of the book. In any case, Spink’s refusal to entertain a judgmental spirit or to let a person’s failings blind her to the immense good they have accomplished is truly refreshing.
It is perhaps her particular gift to enter intuitively into the insights of these figures and to convey them truthfully and accessibly, without letting her own analysis or personal interpretations get in the way. Early in the book she mentions “the power of silence in encouraging people to talk and the value of enabling them to feel fully and sympathetically heard.” Perhaps it is this attitude that enabled her to win the trust of so many exceptional people and transmit something of their message and charisma to a wide audience.
December 24, 2025
Beautifully written by a master of the language. Enjoyed the journey from bucolic England to the United Nations via India, South Africa and many other places.
Introduced to many meaningful characters,who while somewhat esoteric were nevertheless interesting and informative.
A first class addition to her already comprehensive library
Introduced to many meaningful characters,who while somewhat esoteric were nevertheless interesting and informative.
A first class addition to her already comprehensive library
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews