Book Review: "Acedia & Me"

Acedia & Me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer's Life by Kathleen Norris (Riverhead, 2008), hardcover, 352 pages

Kathleen Norris, bestselling author of such well-received books as The Cloister Walk and Dakota: A Spiritual Biography, turns her poet's eye to the difficult subject of depression and spiritual emptiness in Acedia & Me: A Marriage, Monks, and a Writer's Life.  Struggling to accurately identify the emotion exactly, she turns to the earlier Christian idea of acedia, described by the Church father Evagrius as "the noonday demon."

Tracing the discussion of acedia through Christian writings, she explores this spiritual sin as it particularly affected monks seeking to pray the daily afternoon prayers.  Often, such monks found their attention turn listless and unfocused, perhaps by hunger or fatigue, to the point that they did not care to pray; worse, they discovered that, at these times, nothing could encourage them to fulfill their calling to pray with any real emotional investment.

While the recent psychological term "depression" has largely eclipsed common usage of the term "acedia," Norris strongly believes that it accurately describes the noonday demon that significantly challenged her relationships and her writing.  Going far beyond mere writer's block, she describes a persistent numbness against which she struggled to find the will to write.

Norris is a skilled writer and a sensitive memoirist.  There is sophistication and nuance to her introspection, and the reflections offer a rich and subtle confluence of many emotions and ruminations on subjects like the nature and definition of sin and the impact of modern psychology on self-image and self-assessment.

For me, the book is most engaging when Norris applies these considerations to her marriage and its challenges, especially through sickness and health.  One chapter title beautifully encapsulates the wisdom of Norris' approach: "The Quotidian Mysteries."  In vignettes and tone, she considers the day-in/day-out necessities that sometimes left her feeling empty in her marriage, but which also eventually seem to have given the relationship with her husband David a deep meaning that continues after his death at only age 57.  Despite its frequent tedium, its frustrations, and the frequent medical challenges described, she evokes unexpected beauty in the description of her own marriage.

Other parts of the book are less interesting, and many readers may find the early chapters -- which offer the bulk of historical context for the book's focus on acedia -- rather mind-numbing.  While this is partly unfair, it is clear that Norris' explorations of acedia in her own life are more evocative than her attempts at clinical description of acedia in general.  Still, the persistent reader is rewarded with several chapters of great beauty and insight.