Silence

I never realized how meaningful silence is until I read this post.  So true!  I love it.

The Stranger

A MILL, standing in from the road, made him pause.  The gray of his suit was whitened with dust, but it was a well-tailored suit, and you knew at a glance that it's owner could wear it.  When you looked at him, you noticed the face most of all: a face of character, a face that showed reserves of strength, a cultured face, penciled by some secret sorrow in lines that were firm but not hard.  They softened now, as he looked at the mill, and a certain wistfulness came into his face, like that with which a person looks at a sleeping child, or a man thinks of the time when the dew was on his dreams. Then, for a moment, a little smile played about his lips and the firm lines softened.

Thus begins The Stranger by Malachy G. Carroll

I should say first that I knew nothing about this novel before reading it.  When I saw the title and its 1952 copyright I automatically thought a mystery, complete with a murder, and a couple of genius detectives.  Was I ever wrong!  It was mysterious, and it also, in a way, remotely involved detectives, but I was still so very wrong!

Then I began to read.  I very quickly realized my mistake.  It opened lightly, with Irish joy and humor, and I read avidly, delighted to have found something so rare as this promised to be.  However, it proved to be ever so much rarer than I thought, even then. 

I don't know how to tell anything about this without giving it away.    The story is such a wonderful surprise that I wouldn't want it to be less so for anyone than it was for me.  At the same time I want everyone to read it, and how do you make someone want to read anything without telling them about it?  I can't tell you how many book recommendations I have seen on blogs, and thought, Well, that looks interesting and all, but I already have a book list ten miles long.  I don't think I'll get around to buying it any time soon, and promptly proceeded to forget it.  I don't want you to do the same with my recommendation of this book (which you can buy here, so do it now!).  I'll tell you a little, but I'll stop before it gets interesting ;)

A man with the light of Christ in his sad, compassionate eyes, wanders into an Irish town.  Nobody knows who he is, where he's from, or where he's going.  He's a daily communicant, a hard worker, and the children love him, so why does he avoid the good parish priest?  For a while the townspeople make many and various speculations as to his true identity.  Why do they talk to him and come away with no more information than they started with?  What is his secret?  They soon run out of inventive answers to their own questions, and leave him in peace, accepting him for his kindness and obvious love of the children.

It is beautifully Catholic, and has a depth and beauty I hadn't expected.  I laughed and cried with it.  I won't tell you any more except to share a couple of quotations with you.  Quotations that, while beautiful, won't spoil the story for you!  They aren't necessarily from the point of view of the protagonist.  Here you are!

*          *          *

     "The Mother of God," he muttered, "never looked down her nose at the Magdalen." ...What a lovely phrase! he thought.  It had a strange beauty, as if, in the gloom about him, he had suddenly met the odor of a rose.  She was called a rose in the Litany.  It was a long time since he had remembered that.  Yes, that was it--Mystical Rose.  The idea became a prayer: the first prayer that had softened the hard places in his soul for many years.  And it had been put upon his lips by a street woman.  Such a grace was like a boomerang; it would probably return to the dejected, sodden girl who had been its pathetic instrument.  Some morning, the Communion dress would be white again.

*          *          *

     Night had come on him, flowing like a river of darkness through the rent in his soul: lonely stretches of desolation lay before the eyes of his soul, and he sat before his desolation, holding the cold body of his dreams in his arms, as Mary had held her Son.  But his comparison was a whip of light cutting across his sorrow.  The thought of Mary can be as a drop of rich wine dropped into the brine of our sorrows to suffuse it as with the blood that filled the veins of God.

Book Tag

I'm sorry it takes me so long to post!  But I have good news!




I'm working on it... like... tomorrow...



In the meantime...
Here's a book tag!
I tag anyone who wants to do it.
(Just leave a comment and let me know!  I'd like to see your answers!)

Do you snack while you read? If so, favourite reading snack: 

An apple.  I know...  It's original...

What is your favourite drink while reading?

Tea!  I love tea.

Do you tend to mark your books as you read, or does the idea of writing in books horrify you?

Frankly, it horrifies me.  (Although... I did a lot of underlining in The Confessions of St. Augustine.  I know.  I could hardly bring myself to do it.  I won't do it again!) 

How do you keep your place while reading a book? Bookmark? Dog-ears? Laying the book flat open? 

I just grab the nearest object and stick it in my book.  I've been doing better lately, though, and using bookmarks.

Fiction, non-fiction, or both?

Fiction!  Though I like other stuff, too.

Are you a person who tends to read to the end of a chapter, or can you stop anywhere?

I had to learn at a very young age to stop anywhere.  On pain of death.  JK! 

Are you the type of person to throw a book across the room or on the floor if the author irritates you?

No... Although I have burned a few with unacceptable content... I owned them... Just so you know...

If you come across an unfamiliar word, do you stop and look it up right away?

Only if it is most imperative.  Therefore, practically never.  I can usually figure it out by its context.

What are you currently reading?

The Count of Monte Christo by Alexandre Dumas

The King's Achievement by Fr. Robert Hugh Benson

Crime and Punishment by Fyodor Dostoevsky

What is the last book you bought?

Bleak House by Charles Dickens

Do you have a favourite time/place to read?

Any time at all... though I prefer times when I can do so undisturbed.  (Which leaves mostly at night in bed.)

 

Do you prefer series books or stand alones?

How am I to answer this question?  I guess it all depends.  I'm always very excited to hear one of my favorite books has a sequel, but I also dearly love the many stand alones I have. 

Is there a specific book or author you find yourself recommending over and over?

Yes!  Chesterton!  Always!  And Fr. Benson, Baroness Orczy, P. G. Wodehouse, Fr. Owen Francis Dudley... Oh, there are so many!

As for individual books... The Stranger by Malachy G. Carroll and The Prisoner of Zenda by Anthony Hope

How do you organize your books? (by genre, title, author’s last name, etc.)

None of the above, really.  I guess kind of by genre.  I keep my authors together, and as for the rest... I stick them where they'll fit, or with other books of similar size, or from the same publisher, etc.