A Saint, More or Less : A Novel

Rating:
Summary: A saint?
Review: About two women who struggle to find their own religious identities and ideals (and clash in the course), this book opens up all kinds of questions about religion, faith and piety. It's an interesting documentary on the religious conflicts of the times and people's needs to find someone or something to believe in. Being about actual people made it all the more interesting, but I can't say that I believe either of these two women did anything to deserve the title of Saint. Reads alittle like nonfiction at times, but is still an easy, quick and enjoyable book.

Rating:
Summary: An Historical Drama About The Nature Of Faith
Review: Although the events in Henry Grunwald's novel, "A Saint, More Or Less," take place four centuries in the past, the story has a very contemporary feel. In this fact-based novel, he raises intriguing questions about the motivations behind religious wars and the intersection of religious faith and secular power.

Most of the principals of the story are drawn from real life. Barbe Acarie was a Parisian woman of great influence and faith. Nicole Tavernier was a mysterious young woman who arrived in the French capital one day, attracting great attention from both religious leaders and the public at large with her powerful preaching and apparent miracles. The lives of the two women become forever intertwined when Nicole is taken into the Acarie household. The two women begin as friends but rivalry and mistrust quickly take hold, and their battle for spiritual primacy is played out against the continuing struggle between the Catholic and Protestant faiths. The reader is swept along by the flow of events until both women meet their unltimate destinies.

The story is largely seen through the eyes of Dr. Rene Monnet, family physician to the Acaries. Dr. Monnet is strictly a product of the author's imagination, and in many ways is his stand-in in the story, raising the troubling questions posed by the dramatic events of the narrative. This is an elegantly-written, entertaining, and highly thought-provoking book.--William C. Hall