During the holidays, I find myself in more of a spiritual and religious mood and reach for...Mary Gordon, a christian writer whose works I would recommend. Mary is the author of several works of fiction and nonfiction who has won the Annual Story Prize for short fiction. Some of her works of fiction are; The Company of Women, Seeing Through Places, and Men and Angels. Some of her nonfiction titles are; a biography Joan of Arc, The Shadow Man, a memoir about her father and Reading Jesus which uses Gordon's literary training to read the Gospels.
Two of her works got my attention and led me to read her other books. The Company of Women, a book about a young girl, Felicitas, raised by her mother and her friends. These women are intensely religious and have a common devotion to Father Cyprian. The book follows Felicitas through college and motherhood. In Miss Gordon's vision, the church seems to offer an ideal of perfection that dominates the lives of believers and apostates alike.
Good Boys and Dead Girls and Other Essays is the other of her books that got my attention. This book is, "both rewarding and challenging, for it chronicles a mind shaped and informed by religious experience, but not constrained by theological dogma. Through these essays, the reader understands that, like the works of writers and painters she admires, Mary Gordon's own writing is buttressed by a powerful moral vision."
Written by Lidia Grzegorek
