Karen Armstrong speaks to the troubling years following her decision to leave the life of a Roman Catholic nun and join the secular world in 1969. ...
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Jan 26, 2008
Doug
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This is a remarkably personal and insightful journey which takes us through the loss of hope and faith and then back to a higher realm of love and understanding. Here are my personal thoughts about this book:
1. By the end of the book, I felt a bond with her that is similar to something I have felt for some of my best professors and teachers who helped me understand complex things. Karen is extremely honest and open and able to describe emotions and reactions which many thoughtful peop More...
1. By the end of the book, I felt a bond with her that is similar to something I have felt for some of my best professors and teachers who helped me understand complex things. Karen is extremely honest and open and able to describe emotions and reactions which many thoughtful peop More...
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Aug 25, 2011
Lobstergirl
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I feel a little conflicted about Spiral Staircase. For one thing, it's Armstrong's third autobiography. She's a writer whose career started not with the religious histories for which she's now known, but with memoir-writing. Her abandonment at age 25 of a 7-year nun career aroused interest in the publishing world, leading to Through the Narrow Gate: A Memoir of Spiritual Discovery. This was followed by a sequel, Beginning the World. Spiral Staircase is in many ways a rewrite of Beginning the
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Aug 08, 2010
Jana
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"Theology is – or should be – a species of poetry, which read quickly or encountered in a hubbub of noise makes no sense." Karen Armstrong
I read The Spiral Staircase a few weeks back between road trips, first to visit an aunt and uncle in a small university community and second to attend an Episcopal peace conference at a mountaintop retreat / convent. The timing of my read of this memoir (about a nun who left the church to pursue graduate work at Oxford only to leave ac More...
I read The Spiral Staircase a few weeks back between road trips, first to visit an aunt and uncle in a small university community and second to attend an Episcopal peace conference at a mountaintop retreat / convent. The timing of my read of this memoir (about a nun who left the church to pursue graduate work at Oxford only to leave ac More...
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Sep 04, 2008
Aldean
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The first book I read that helped me realize that I was not alone in my experience of post-seminary difficulty. Armstrong's account of leaving the convent was so powerfully analogous to my own experiences that I nearly wept as I read (something I only do on very rare occasions), both with remembered pain and grief and with joy that there was nothing peculiarly wrong with me or my experience as a refugee from a life of professional holiness.
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Jan 28, 2011
Tim
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I am a fan of Karen Armstrong. Her contributions to religious history are very large. And I always took her as presenting evidence fairly while not being prejudicial to one or other particular religion. I have read many of her books.
The Spiral Staircase was intimately entertaining. I always knew of Armstrong's experience in the convent and rejection of the same but the book goes on into much more detail of her experiences.
She says, at one point, that if Satan were myt More...
The Spiral Staircase was intimately entertaining. I always knew of Armstrong's experience in the convent and rejection of the same but the book goes on into much more detail of her experiences.
She says, at one point, that if Satan were myt More...
Dec 29, 2011
Paul
rated it:
Every once in a while, I get around to reading a book that surprises me because the author has put into words things that I have felt the urge to say, but not had the words for, nor had ever seen in print. Karen Armstrong's memoir, The Spiral Staircase: My Climb Out of Darkness, is one of these books. If a soul could be said to have emotional strings, then Karen's book resonated with those frequencies in mine, and this made the book a breeze to read.
It had sat on my shelf for several More...
It had sat on my shelf for several More...
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Dec 15, 2007
Adam
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From Publishers Weekly
In 1962, British writer Armstrong (The Battle for God, etc.) entered a Roman Catholic convent, smitten by the desire to "find God." She was 17 years old at the time—too young, she recognizes now, to have made such a momentous decision. Armstrong’s 1981 memoir Through the Narrow Gate described her frustrating, lonely experience of cloistered life and her decision, at 24, to renounce her vows. In its sequel, Beginning the World (1983), she tried to explain her More...
In 1962, British writer Armstrong (The Battle for God, etc.) entered a Roman Catholic convent, smitten by the desire to "find God." She was 17 years old at the time—too young, she recognizes now, to have made such a momentous decision. Armstrong’s 1981 memoir Through the Narrow Gate described her frustrating, lonely experience of cloistered life and her decision, at 24, to renounce her vows. In its sequel, Beginning the World (1983), she tried to explain her More...
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Apr 29, 2007
sphamilton
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Karen Armstrong started off as a nun, and now - long after she left the convent and rejected her Catholic faith - she is a theologian who still doesn't go to church. What she's interested in is human beings' conception of God, how they use it, and what the common points are in the major world religions. She writes about her life, but above all she writes about her passion for scholarship and discovery.
A couple of bits from the book that really struck me, and made me think a lot abou More...
A couple of bits from the book that really struck me, and made me think a lot abou More...
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Oct 29, 2008
Will
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A nun’s tale. Armstrong tells of her experience from her seven years as a teenager and then young nun in the convent through a loss of faith, severe physical and mental challenges, trying to find her way in the world as an academic, and ultimately coming to a new understanding of spirituality. It is a reasonably quick read. I found that I was very interested at times, and at others just going through the motions. One notable absence here is any real detail on her experiences with men. She notes
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Jan 08, 2009
Laila
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I enjoyed this book more and more the deeper I got into it. Karen Armstrong is such an appealingly intelligent and slightly odd person. A fascinating memoir.
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Jul 26, 2011
Oh, darn it. I am trying to read through books that I don't plan to keep in order to lighten the load on my shelves. I was really enjoying this work, which is an entertaining, touching memoir that spans perhaps 25 years post-covent life of the author (heavy on the beginning years--the end races). It kept my interest and I was glad to be reading it and learning about the author's internal and external struggles with religion, the world, other people, academia, etc.
And then, late last night, I More...
And then, late last night, I More...
Mar 31, 2009
Melanie
rated it:
Before Karen Armstrong became an authority, both learned and accessible, on the religions of the world, she spent seven years in a convent. Her first memoir, Through the Narrow Gate, recounted those seven years. This book takes the reader beyond those years. through a period of intense sufferings and trials, and to the point where she discovers her true vocation.
The first part of this book recounts the end of her time in the convent. The brutal and, sometimes, absurd practices of the More...
The first part of this book recounts the end of her time in the convent. The brutal and, sometimes, absurd practices of the More...
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Sep 25, 2011
Joanie
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The Spiral Staircase is a sequel to Karen Armstrong's The Narrow Gate. Both are memoirs. The Narrow Gate tells of Armstrong's years as a nun; The Spiral Staircase of the years that followed. Transitioning from life in a convent to life outside was frightening and painful for Armstrong, involving losses that were generally not evident to those around her. I strongly identified with her as she described the immediate absence of security upon leaving the convent, the slower realization that she
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Jul 09, 2011
Gail
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What an inspiration for someone like me!! Do I dare to write in a public forum that I have recovered from a 'wounded mind?' That is exactly what Karen Armstrong has done in this book. She describes her girlhood and young adulthood living cloistered in a Roman Catholic convent with very rigid constraints and little intellectual stimulation. Later, she is enrolled in University and subsequently leaves her religious order. Throughout her young life and early adulthood, she suffered debilitating sei
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May 11, 2011
Lee
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This is a new sequel to Karen’s first book, Through the Narrow Gate, after the first sequel, Beginning the World, flopped. Because, she says, she was “not truthful.”
Perhaps Karen overcompensated on the “truthful” part this time around. The result is a brutally honest autobiography of a repeat failure. At one point, Karen despairs, “I was an ex-nun, a failed academic, mentally unstable, and now I could add epileptic to this dismal list. … Even God, for whom I had searched so long, is si More...
Perhaps Karen overcompensated on the “truthful” part this time around. The result is a brutally honest autobiography of a repeat failure. At one point, Karen despairs, “I was an ex-nun, a failed academic, mentally unstable, and now I could add epileptic to this dismal list. … Even God, for whom I had searched so long, is si More...
Jan 20, 2011
Shannon
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A friend loaned me this book and said it was good. She said, "It's about this nun who leaves the convent and what she goes through afterward." That sounded pretty dull. I'm not a religious person, but neither is my friend, so I thought I'd give it a try. I was hooked on the first page. It may be a bit hard to believe, but this book was a real page-turner for me. Three different times I sat in the bath until the water was almost cold because I couldn't stop reading. Armstrong entered th
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Jul 10, 2010
Heather
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Karen Armstrong is one of my favorite religious thinkers and scholars, and I loved this window into her personal life. The Spiral Staircase tells the story of her return to secular life after 7 years in a convent. (Her time in the convent, where she desperately sought but ultimately failed to find God, are the subject of her earlier memoir, The Narrow Gate). She's so thoughtful and smart, a true academic, but also honest and deeply compassionate. I loved that in the last 15 pages of the book
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Jul 03, 2010
Nancy
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It's interesting: I think I read this book several years ago (although it is possible I read THROUGH THE NARROW GATE, her previous memoir, instead). If I DID read this one, clearly I have changed since that time, because this time, it was Armstrong's struggle with faith that hit me hardest, and what I remember last time was being simply mesmerized by her account of life as a nun. Which is horrifying, by the way! When Armstrong talks about life as a nun - and as an ex-nun - and how her format
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May 01, 2010
Kathryn
rated it:
(Warning: this one's going to be a little long. Feel free to skim.)
This is the second religious book I've read that was written by a woman, the first one being "Take This Bread", by Sara Miles. I liked the tone of both of them, very down-to-earth and conversational. I also noticed two major points that both books shared. One of those (and this is something that many theologians from all three Abrahamamic religions agree on) is that compassion and helping others is CENTRAL t More...
This is the second religious book I've read that was written by a woman, the first one being "Take This Bread", by Sara Miles. I liked the tone of both of them, very down-to-earth and conversational. I also noticed two major points that both books shared. One of those (and this is something that many theologians from all three Abrahamamic religions agree on) is that compassion and helping others is CENTRAL t More...
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Dec 17, 2009
Jon
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After reading Muhammad a Prophet for our Time Eminent Lives by Karen Armstrong, I’ve become a Karen Armstrong enthusiast. The Spiral Staircase is her autobiography, and provides the shortest and most personal access to understanding how she got to her current position of being an interpreter of religious tradition in the face of its “cultured despisers” Richard Dawkins, Christopher Hitchens and Sam Harris. If forced to speak in the most literal terms about a being within the universe, Armstron
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Mar 29, 2010
Melanie
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I'm drawn to books in which people discuss their spiritual and psychological struggles. I'm also drawn to books about people who struggle with religion and belief (because I do too). This book is that and much more.
It is about a woman who spent seven years as a nun, then left the monastery, suffered a nervous breakdown, suffered for years with undiagnosed epilepsy, and got turned down for a doctorate at Oxford.
But the most remarkable aspect of the story is that, after r More...
It is about a woman who spent seven years as a nun, then left the monastery, suffered a nervous breakdown, suffered for years with undiagnosed epilepsy, and got turned down for a doctorate at Oxford.
But the most remarkable aspect of the story is that, after r More...
Oct 22, 2010
Catherine
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This was an intellectually fascinating book that failed to capture me emotionally. I valued Armstrong's story of her years in a convent, her rejection of that lifestyle, her subsequent attempt to find a niche in academia, and her eventual success as a independent researcher and writer of religious history. Her description of trauma resonated deeply with me, as did her long journey to find a way beyond that trauma to a fulfilling social life. Yet I didn't connect to her joys, nor to her despon
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Nov 14, 2011
Khaya
rated it:
Although this was more of a three in some ways, I'm giving it a four because of the way it spoke to me.
I loved Through the Narrow Gate: A Memoir of Spiritual Discovery, Armstrong's memoir of her years spent in a convent and her decision to leave. Aside from offering an intriguing description of a nun's life in the '60s (Armstrong lets us know on several occasions that it's probably much different now with the changes of Vatican II), I found that I related to it personally as a relig More...
I loved Through the Narrow Gate: A Memoir of Spiritual Discovery, Armstrong's memoir of her years spent in a convent and her decision to leave. Aside from offering an intriguing description of a nun's life in the '60s (Armstrong lets us know on several occasions that it's probably much different now with the changes of Vatican II), I found that I related to it personally as a relig More...
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Jan 08, 2009
Brandy
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its a cold world and epillepsy sucks.
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Aug 08, 2007
Brenda
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This book is based on T.S. Eliott's poem, "Ash Wednesday", and uses the metaphor of climbing the spiral staircase as one woman's climb toward health, spiritual strength, and personal identity. This book is surprisingly inspiring, and has a message for all of us, as we are all climbing our own staircases. Meditative and at times intense, this is a good book to read during winter solstices, or whenever you feel most meditative.
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Dec 28, 2011
Joy
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I loved this book. Parts of this book are absolutely heartbreaking--Armstrong's fragility as she leaves her convent, her "spells" which are misdiagnosed for years as a mental health problems (when they were really temporal lobe seizures), her failure at the end of her graduate education, etc. But the way she continues to try and move forward, tries to make sense in her own mind of what is happening to her, is inspiring. This is not in any way a Hallmark kind of story in that there i
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Aug 18, 2010
Marguerite
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The Spiral Staircase is Karen Armstrong's account of her life after she left the convent. It tells how she came, by an unconventional route, to be a religious scholar and author. It includes a cautionary tale about medicine (her epilepsy was written off as a character flaw by the nuns and a psychiatric disorder by her doctors, helped, maybe, by her social awkwardness and habit of self-cloistering). The book also tells how Armstrong lost her Catholic faith and found fulfillment and meaning in wri
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Jul 23, 2011
Raven
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I think it's absolutely divine that this book was brought to my attention at this time in my life. I spent the first half of the book completely intrigued by Karen Armstrong's story of her return to secular life after seven years of being a nun. I spent the second half of the book relating to almost every page as I turned one by one further into myself. This book has brought to my attention that I have always been, and always will be on a path that is a true hope for walking with God. Every step
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Aug 12, 2010
Jerry
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Karen Armstrong left her order (she was a nun) and had to reconnect with secular society. (In 1969 and never heard of the Beatles. I consider it one of my favorites - it represents issues of autistic children, autism, and much about the relationship between religion and spirituality. It has "essay elements" which means it is not for the "story purist."
Jerry
Jerry
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Jun 10, 2010
Sull
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Wow, a bomb of a book! KA entered a convent straight out of school in the early 60's, then left it 7 years later in the late 60's. she entered when shirtwist dresses & respect for one's elders was the norm & came out when drugs, sex & rock&roll had changed tidy well-mannered young people into angry messy, protesting youth with missions. So KA was shell-shocked, entering a world transformed. Her undiagnosed epilepsy added to her bewildered sense of being separate--almost walled-off--from the r
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