A Time to Keep Silence

from RTS1942

A slender, interesting book written in a somewhat florid style, which sparkles in Fermor's usual travel stories, but results in rather dusty and uninteresting prose when applied to the subject of this book, which is a description of the monastic life. I found the most interesting parts those that...

from RTS1942

A slender, interesting book written in a somewhat florid style, which sparkles in Fermor's usual travel stories, but results in rather dusty and uninteresting prose when applied to the subject of this book, which is a description of the monastic life. I found the most interesting parts those that...

from MyopicBookworm

A slight collection of three essays. The first two describe the author's stays in French monasteries in the 1950s, in which he commends the silence and daily routine, but as an unbeliever obviously felt like a fish out of water in many respects. The historical outlines are interesting (I had not ...

from ponsonby

The prose in this book is good but not perhaps as wonderful as some people think. Really, it is a slim volume which records PLF's visits to three West European monasteries plus some abandoned sites in Turkey. As travel writing it is not remarkable; perhaps more valuable are the reflections on mon...

from JDHomrighausen

I picked this up in NYC's Westside Books on my layover Monday. Fermor, a British travel writer, spent some time in French monasteries during the 1940's for a period of sojourn and writing. This short book describes Fermor's descent into the silence of the Benedictine and more-arduous Cistercian m...