Lying Awake Audiobook By Mark Salzman cover art

Lying Awake

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Lying Awake

By: Mark Salzman
Narrated by: Linda Stephens
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Mark Salzman received critical acclaim for Iron & Silk, his personal account of two years spent in China. In Lying Awake, he creates a fascinating spiritual landscape that lies behind the walls of a monastery. Listeners around the world have praised the beauty and originality of this novel.

Sister John has devoted her life to serving God. For almost 30 years, she has lived in a Carmelite monastery near Los Angeles. There, she experiences religious visions of such intensity that she is revered by the other nuns. But these visions also bring on excruciating headaches. When she is offered an operation that may stop the pain, she realizes that it may also stop the visions. Now Sister John wonders how this change will affect her faith.

Lying Awake is an eloquent examination of religious experience that transcends the boundaries of church and doctrine. Narrator Linda Stephens perfectly conveys Sister John's thoughts, feelings, and visions.

©2000 Mark Salzman (P)2001 Recorded Books Genre Fiction Literary Fiction Psychological
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I'm not sure why I liked this book so much. Maybe Hildegard von Bingen, if she'd lived in modern times. My aunt was a nun, and I was very fond of her. From what I knew of her community, it was much as portrayed here. Always things to deal with in life, but different things in a monastic community.

Liked it

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I got a lot more out of this when I listen to it the second time around.

Interesting listen for sure

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I finished this little book at one sitting. Yet, there is something to it. It tells the story of Sister John of the Cross who learns that her ecstatic visions may be seizures that endanger her health. She has to decide whether her life is a life of faith or a life of closeness to God through these ecstasies. It raises interesting questions about the meaning of the life of faith.

Still need to process

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Unique story, but the ending was disappointing. It was not terrible, but I would not necessarily recommend it either. It basically just left me dissatisfied. The story is engaging enough, but at the end I found myself saying, Really, that's it?

Just Okay

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The content is nicely grounded in psychiatric research. We all live in schizophrenic world views.

We all hold Schizophrenic world views ….

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I had high hopes for this book about personal and collective religious experience and perceptions. I have listened to the book twice thinking I must have misunderstood some key message. However, with each reading I find the premise of the book increasingly disturbing. The portrayal of monastic life was strange. The motivations of the community and the nun involved seemed skewed and just plain off. I think the book was written by an outsider looking in at a life and situation they did not even begin to understand. Major pieces of the picture and puzzle are missing and or even misrepresented. Beautiful writing in the abstract but I'm afraid it misses the mark and is just terrible.

Disturbing on Many Levels

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