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A NUN'S DIARY by Ann Diamond

BOOK DESCRIPTION AND REVIEWS - EXCERPT

 


This is a completely revised and redesigned edition of Ann Diamond's quirky, unconventional 1985 prose poem masterpiece, A Nun's Diary. It is this version which is the basis for the play Echo, directed by Robert Lepage, the internationally-acclaimed creator of La Trilogie des Dragons, Vinci, and Circulations.

Synopsis:

This is an outlandish, quirky, beautifully-written exposure of one woman's fix on God-his surrealistic depravities, her own lusts and horrors, their vital "marriage. A Nun's Diary expresses a poetic theology that has as much to do with contemporary morality and love as it does with the institutions and traditions of Christianity. It is very funny-the humour both bawdy and black-and brilliant in its perceptions of what women, if they departed from conventional assessments, might think of men.

Reviews

"One of the few must-read collections of poetry to appear in a long while."
- Toronto Star


Excerpt

I did not like being married to God.

Often I came home and found him occupied with something absurd: hammering little nails into strips of tin. Nothing on the stove. Facing him there in the kitchen, I was frightened by the emptiness, the cold, his oppressive hunger, my own emptiness and inadequacy.

Sitting there in the evenings I saw his apathy and hostility, saw how quickly I had turned into a meaningless object, a spot on his retina, something he had taught himself not to see.

The dead routines, the grim self-consciousness, the shortlived relief of laughter subsiding into another painful silence. The crushing weight of his constant presence. A weird Hell that only he could have invented.