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Exiles (Hardcover)

by Ron Hansen (Author)

4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

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Product details

Hardcover: 227 pages
Publisher: Farrar, Straus & Giroux Inc; 1 Reprint edition (1 Jul 2008)
Language English
ISBN-10: 0374150974
ISBN-13: 978-0374150976
Product Dimensions: 21.3 x 14.2 x 2.5 cm

Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)

Amazon.co.uk Sales Rank: 351,773 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

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Product Description

In December 1875, the steamship Deutschland left Bremen, bound for England and then America. On board were five young nuns who, exiled by Bismarck's laws against Catholic religious orders, were going to begin their lives anew in Missouri. Early one morning, the ship ran aground in the Thames and more than sixty lives were lost - including those of the five nuns.Hopkins was a Jesuit seminarian in Wales, and he was so moved by the news of the shipwreck that he wrote a grand poem about it, his first serious work since abandoning a literary career at Oxford to become a priest. He too would die young, an exile from the literary world. But as Hansen's gorgeously written account of Hopkins' life makes clear, he fulfilled his calling.Combining a thrilling tragedy at sea with the seeming shipwreck of Hopkins' own life, "Exiles" joins Hansen's "Mariette in Ecstasy" (called "an astonishingly deft and provocative novel" by "The New York Times") as a novel that dramatizes the passionate inner search of religious life and makes it accessible to us in the way that only great art can.

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5.0 out of 5 stars an unusual and successful novel, 21 Aug 2009

By	C. Vaughan (Birmingham, UK) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

I was intrigued to find out how the author could create a drama from a life that was so markedly undramatic, that of the poet, Gerard Manley Hopkins. He does so by imaginatively recreating the events and people surrounding the wreck of the 'Deutschland' and showing how this terrible event, especially the fate of the nuns travelling to America, exiled by Bismarck's laws against Catholic religious orders, resonated with the poet, hidden away at a Jesuit college in North Wales. Afterwards,we follow Hopkins through to his death in Dublin at the age of 44, exiled from his English family and contempories because of his conversion to Catholicism and exiled by his English political beliefs from the Irish. If, like me, you are a fan of the poetry of Manley Hopkins, you will love this book. But it can be recommended, also, for Hansen's fine writing style and use of language, reflecting his poetic subject matter, and the way he brings his characters to life. His depiction of what happened aboard the 'Deutschland' is both gripping and poignant. Having read the book I am now eager to read other books by Ron Hansen.

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4.0 out of 5 stars "Christ was an exile, too, wasn't he?", 18 May 2008

By	Mary Whipple (New England) - See all my reviews (TOP 10 REVIEWER)

Gerard Manley Hopkins, a poet almost unknown in his own lifetime, is the most experimental and most challenging of the Victorian writers. Abandoning "the cloying poetry, sentimentality, and forced rhymes" of his contemporaries, in favor of the "sprung rhythms" of Anglo-Saxon poetry, Hopkins hoped to "recreate the native and natural stresses of speech." A convert to Catholicism, Hopkins joined the Society of Jesus in 1868, and he soon determined that he must give up writing poetry to avoid earthly distractions from his priestly duties.

The wreck of the Deutschland, a passenger vessel going from Germany to New York in December, 1875, and the consequent deaths of five young nuns who were passengers, however, moved him to write a 35-stanza memorial which is among the most "modern" poems of the era. Imagining the nuns' deaths by drowning in frigid waters off the coast of England, Hopkins recreates their religious torments as they face their deaths in the roiling sea. "The Wreck of the Deutschland" (included here as an Appendix), regarded as Hopkins's most important long poem, was never published in his lifetime, even in the Catholic journal to which he submitted it, and it was almost lost forever.

Ron Hansen, the immensely versatile author of Mariette in Ecstasy, The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford, Hitler's Niece: A Novel, and Atticus: A Novel, among other titles, examines the nature of faith, the need for love and acceptance, and the isolation of the exile as he develops two story lines and numerous characters. Hopkins, his family, Jesuit colleagues, and friends are depicted from his earliest decision to convert to the Roman Catholic faith, until his death, roughly twenty years later, in 1889. The stories of the five nuns, which alternate with the sections on Hopkins, depict their childhoods and acceptance of their religious vocations, then expand to include their forced exile from Germany and their experiences on the Deutschland.

Hansen's careful recreations, based on impeccable scholarship, take on life and power here, and even the horrifying images of the foundering Deutschland reflect a kind of ghostly magnificence. Imagery is compressed, as it is in Hopkins's poetry, and the gale facing the Deutschland contrasts starkly with the summer weather that Hopkins experiences during much of his story. The crises of faith faced by the nuns and by Hopkins unite the novel by providing a shared experience.

Because the novel is based on real people and real events, however, there is little room for Hansen to soar into his own creative realm without carrying along the baggage of history, and devoutly religious readers will probably identify more directly with the questions of faith than will more agnostic readers. Hansen is a remarkable writer who creates narrative tension in intensely dramatic scenes, however, and this novel, filled with vibrant detail and raw emotion, will fascinate many lovers of literary fiction and carefully developed historical characters and events. n Mary Whipple

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