The most recommended books about nuns

You don’t have to grow up Catholic to like this play, but It sure doesn’t hurt.

Set in a Catholic elementary school in the Bronx, Doubt introduces us to Sister Aloysius, an uncompromising principal who runs her school as if it were a Marine bootcamp. This regime gets shaken when suspicions of sexual child abuse begin to arise.

What I like most about this play is how four flesh-and-blood characters – a school principal, a history teacher, a priest/gym instructor, and a student’s mother – can bring an entire school and community onstage in an incredibly vital way.

It’s why I think the play is superior to the later film adaptation and also why the play received so many awards, including a Tony for Best Play and a Pulitzer for Drama. 

This older, quieter novel by Sarah Dunant has stayed with me over the years. It tells the story of a young Italian woman forced into a convent after a clandestine love affair. This was the fate of thousands of Renaissance women, whether or not they had a religious vocation: convents were repositories for “surplus” women who couldn’t be respectably married off.

I appreciate how this book focuses on the surprising complexity of the cloister, from the friendships and enmities among the nuns to their incredible knowledge and expertise in music and medicine.

Dunant’s books about Renaissance Italy are always well-researched, and she has a flair for integrating small details that bring this hidden world to life.

The curiosities we have about life can be deeply mysterious, and I’ve learned to love that about it. So, it seems, has Jane Christmas; her memoir recounts her exploration of the possibility of living a cloistered life. She feels compelled to take this journey and is willing to follow her instincts even if they lead to some unusual places.

I loved that this writer and human were open to exploring a deeply spiritual existence and then sharing what that experience was like. It’s not every day we get to go behind the scenes on what may be one of the most personal journeys of a human life.

I sought out this book after Divine Mercy Sunday 2002. A visiting priest had shared St. Faustina’s story of receiving the Divine Mercy Chaplet from our Lord on September 13-14, 1935. Several of her dates coincide with dates that have significance in my own life, only mine in the present. God spreads his message of mercy through a Polish nun on what I would eventually discover through personal research, was the same dates that Hitler addressed youth in Nuremberg to inspire National Socialism. The diary gave me a glimpse of a real woman’s calling to bring God’s mercy to our world. 

The Spiral Staircase is the book I’ve read the most number of times as an adult. It is the autobiography of Karen Armstrong who was a Catholic nun for six years in the 1960s in the UK. The book picks up after she leaves her convent and is studying English literature at Oxford University. She is also suffering from mysterious episodes of fainting and memory loss, and so we are taken into her struggles with both academia and the psychiatry of the 1970s. She then spirals through other careers and eventually returns to God – not now as a person of faith but as a writer about religion – its beauty and its tension.

This is perhaps the most honest book I’ve read, as it unflinchingly describes the experience of making terrible mistakes – as we almost all do – without blame or self-flagellation. Karen Armstrong learns, in the end,… show more.

I love this story because it portrays people choosing to die to themselves in order to live for God.

These Benedictine sisters are not running away from the world. Each woman faces her past, present, and future through the lens of devotion to God. Centering their lives around worship has cost them dearly but, as I read, I began to grasp its worth with greater clarity. I’ve seen myself that believers in Christ who die to themselves, paradoxically, seem more alive.

This House of Brede made me reflect on the concept of losing your life to save it. It reminded me that losing my life is tragically inevitable, but saving it is gloriously possible.

I love unusual combinations, like a medieval nun who’s also an experienced sleuth with a sharp tongue and an unflappable demeanor. To Dame Frevisse, murder is an unwanted disruption of the quiet life she craves, yet her nimble brain and passion for justice impel her to get involved. She will keep probing until the truth is found, even if that truth isn’t what others want to hear. 

In this book, Dame Frevisse is asked to investigate the death of a man she despised, which doesn’t help her attitude. One of the things I like best about Dame Frevisse is her rich inner life, as she struggles with not-so-godly attitudes and finds moments of deep peace while practicing what to us may look like dry, tedious, duties.

I read this book many years ago - loved the strong female protagonist and was impressed by the writer’s detailed knowledge of the period, which must have come from vast research. The setting was familiar to me, as I had spent much of my childhood within view of Whitby Abbey. Though utterly fascinated by the story, I had a somewhat different take on what might have happened there in the year 664 and felt inspired to try my own hand at a historical murder mystery.

Sister Joan is yet another religious sleuth. Set in the early 1990s, I think this series now qualifies as a historical mystery. It is a lighter read than my other choices, but one I absolutely loved and, like Cadfael, I dived in and devoured the lot. Vow of Silence is the first and hooked me straight away. The religious life fascinates me and I enjoyed the way the ceremonial routine of the convent was woven into the mysteries. This detail serves to immerse you in the life of Sister Joan, a down-to-earth heroine who drew my admiration. The mysteries unfold naturally into the setting and don’t seem incongruous. A more gentle read than the others I have chosen, but acutely satisfying.

I personally love twisted relationship books, especially when the antihero is hard to distinguish. This book deals with a marriage that is far from typical. I can't say more without spoilers, but take my word that this makes for a fabulous suspenseful read. If you read a book that makes you want to kick and scream when you finally "get it" then this is a perfect read for you. All I can say about Black Lies is expect the unexpected!