The Cloister
A Novel
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Narrated by:
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James Carroll
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By:
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James Carroll
About this listen
From National Book Award-winning writer James Carroll comes a novel of the timeless love story of Peter Abelard and Héloïse, and its impact on a modern priest and a Holocaust survivor seeking sanctuary in Manhattan.
Father Michael Kavanagh is shocked when he sees a friend from his seminary days named Runner Malloy at the altar of his humble parish in upper Manhattan - a friend who was forced to leave under scandalous circumstances. Compelled to reconsider the past, Father Kavanagh wanders into the medieval haven of the Cloisters and stumbles into a conversation with a lovely and intriguing docent, Rachel Vedette.
Having survived the Holocaust and escaped to America, Rachel remains obsessed with her late father’s greatest scholarly achievement: a study demonstrating the relationship between the famously discredited monk Peter Abelard and Jewish scholars. Feeling an odd connection with Father Kavanagh, Rachel shares with him the work that cost her father his life.
At the center of these interrelated stories is the classic romance between the great philosopher Abelard and his intellectual equal, Héloïse. For Rachel, Abelard is the key to understanding her people’s place in history. And for Father Kavanagh, the controversial theologian may be a doorway to understanding the life he himself might have had outside the church.
©2018 James Carroll (P)2018 Random House AudioListeners also enjoyed...
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Critic reviews
"With his familiar deftness and depth, James Carroll weaves a profound and compelling novel from diverse but overlapping narrative strands. From the conversations between a Catholic priest and a French Jewish woman in mid-twentieth century New York to the brutality of Nazi-occupied Paris to the great medieval love story of Abelard and Heloïse, The Cloister illuminates life's most vital questions and proposes inspiring, radical, and timely answers." (Claire Messud, New York Times best-selling author of The Burning Girl and The Emperor’s Children)
"James Carroll has written an enlightening, vitally important book, a necessity for our time." (Maxine Hong Kingston, author of I Love a Broad Margin to My Life)
"I didn’t know I needed this novel until I read it. As unflinching about the Holocaust as it is about the Crusades, The Cloister is a fearless exploration of the violent foundations on which our own historical inheritance rests. And like all the best fiction, it commandeers the reader’s heart." (Rachel Kadish, author of The Weight of Ink)
"Fascinating in its evocation of the twelfth-century Catholic Church in France, this lavishly detailed historical novel serves as an education in historical philosophy, a poignant tale of devoted love, and a portrait of a postwar human crisis influenced heavily by both.... This is definitely a thought-provoking book." (Booklist)
"Carroll blends his well-aired interests in history, theology, and literary fiction in this deftly told story that partakes richly of all.... A rich, literate tale well told." (Kirkus Reviews)
"This is a wonderful novel, and it's wonder-filled. James Carroll brings the twelfth-century lovers, Abelard and Heloïse, blazingly back to life, and he does so through the medium of a New York priest and a Parisian Jew. The present and the past illuminate each other, and the startling mysteries of prejudice, brutality, and love are made doubly vivid here. Like All the Light You Cannot See, The Cloister is a book of gravity and consequence that makes you need to turn and turn the page." (Nicholas Delbanco, author of Curiouser and Curiouser: Essays)
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Only so so
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By: Sam Thomas
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Winter Journey
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Halina Shore is a Polish born forensic dentist living in Australia. When she travels to Poland to take part in the investigation of a war crime, she finds herself at the center of a bitter struggle in a community that has been divided by a grim legacy. As the investigation proceeds, her professional assignment becomes a confronting personal odyssey as the truth about her own past begins to emerge.
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Historical Story Marred by Unnecessary Fluff
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By: Diane Armstrong
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The Stranger House
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Story
For years, the Stranger House has stood in the village of Illthwaite, offering refuge to travellers. People like Sam, a brilliant young mathematician, who believes that anything that can't be explained by maths isn't worth explaining. And Miguel, a historian running from a priests' seminary, who sees ghosts. Sam is an experienced young woman, Miguel a 26-year-old virgin.
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an OK read
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The Magus
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Performance
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John Fowles’s The Magus was a literary landmark of the 1960s. Nicholas Urfe goes to a Greek island to teach at a private school and becomes enmeshed in curious happenings at the home of a mysterious Greek recluse, Maurice Conchis. Are these events, involving attractive young English sisters, just psychological games, or an elaborate joke, or more? Reality shifts as the story unfolds. The Magus reflected the issues of the 1960s perfectly, and it continues to create tension and concern today.
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One of the best novels that I really think I hate.
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By: John Fowles
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Three Daughters of Eve
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Set across Istanbul and Oxford, from the 1980s to the present day, Three Daughters of Eve is a sweeping tale of faith and friendship, tradition and modernity, love and an unexpected betrayal. Peri, a wealthy Turkish housewife and mother, is on her way to a dinner party at a seaside mansion in Istanbul when a beggar snatches her handbag. As she wrestles to get it back, a photograph falls to the ground - an old polaroid of three young women and their university professor.
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Review 3 daughters of Eve
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By: Elif Shafak
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When She Woke
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
Hannah Payne awakens to a nightmare. She is lying on a table in a bare room, covered only by a paper gown, with cameras broadcasting her every move to millions at home. She is now a convicted criminal, and her skin color has been genetically altered. Her crime, according to the State of Texas: the murder of her unborn child, whose father she refuses to name. Her color: red. The color of newly shed blood.
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A Thoughtful Dystopia
- By Amy on 01-28-13
By: Hillary Jordan
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The Pale Blue Eye
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When the body of a suicide victim disappears at West Point Military Academy in 1831, only to be discovered hours later missing its heart, the Academy calls on retired detective Gus Landor to investigate. Landor is something of a legend among his peers, noted for an uncanny, Holmesian ability to read people. When Edgar Allan Poe, a new cadet, comes forth with his own cryptic conclusion—that the man Landor is looking for is a poet—Landor is intrigued and enlists Poe as his assistant.
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Could not get through it
- By Amazon Customer on 10-25-15
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Push Not the River
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Story
Push Not the River is the rich story of Poland in the late 1700's - a time of heartache and turmoil as the country's once peaceful people are torn apart by neighboring countries and divided loyalties. It is then, at the young and vulnerable age of seventeen, that Lady Anna Maria Berezowska loses both of her parents and must leave the only home she has ever known.
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Save your time; buy something else.
- By AMS on 10-22-15
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The Ambassador's Daughter
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Story
Brought to the peace conference by her father, a German diplomat, Margot Rosenthal initially resents being trapped in the congested French capital, where she is still looked upon as the enemy. But as she contemplates returning to Berlin and a life with Stefan, the wounded fiancé she hardly knows anymore, she decides that being in Paris is not so bad after all. Bored and torn between duty and the desire to be free, Margot strikes up unlikely alliances: with Krysia, an accomplished musician with radical acquaintances and a secret to protect; and with Georg, the handsome, damaged naval officer who gives Margot a job.
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Book 0 in the series
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The Bastard
- The Kent Family Chronicles, Book 1
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Performance
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Story
Set against the colorful tumult of events that gave rise to our fledgling nation, this novel of romance and adventure introduces Phillipe Charboneau. The illegitimate son of an English nobleman, Phillipe flees Europe and, as Philip Kent, joins the men who set our course for freedom. The Bastard is the first volume in the Kent Family Chronicles, a series of novels that details one family's journey in the early years of the American nation.
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An Amazing Tale
- By will on 11-06-13
By: John Jakes
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And Only to Deceive
- Lady Emily, Book 1
- By: Tasha Alexander
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Overall
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Performance
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Story
For Emily, accepting the proposal of Philip, the viscount Ashton, was an easy way to escape her overbearing mother, who was set on a grand society match. So when Emily's dashing husband died on safari soon after their wedding, she felt little grief. After all, she barely knew him. Now, nearly two years later, she discovers that Philip was a far different man from the one she had married so cavalierly.
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Tiresome
- By nkevinsc on 03-05-15
By: Tasha Alexander
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The Day of Atonement
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Lisbon, 1755: A distinguished-looking gentleman emerges from the bowels of a ship freshly arrived from London, and sets into the city with a singular purpose. This is Sebastian Foxx, born SebastiAo Raposa, and his parents were abducted by the Inquisition when Sebastian was just 13 years old.
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Action packed adventure in an unusual setting
- By Jean on 11-29-14
By: David Liss
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In the First Circle
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Moscow, Christmas Eve, 1949. The Soviet secret police intercept a call made to the American embassy by a Russian diplomat who promises to deliver secrets about the nascent Soviet Atomic Bomb program. On that same day, a brilliant mathematician is locked away inside a Moscow prison that houses the country's brightest minds. He and his fellow prisoners are charged with using their abilities to sleuth out the caller's identity, and they must choose whether to aid Joseph Stalin's repressive state - or refuse and accept transfer to the Siberian Gulag camps, and almost certain death.
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One of the five finest novels written in the 20th Century
- By Ellis D Vener on 04-08-19
By: Aleksandr Solzhenitsyn, and others
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What listeners say about The Cloister
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Diane Kruse
- 09-10-21
James Carrioll
James Carroll again reveals his literary gift of being a brilliant wordsmith in THE CLOISTER. In this work he presents three engaging stories that beautifully intertwine. An exceptionally good read for lovers of historical fiction.
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Overall
- Deborah Purdy
- 05-28-18
A Story woven with confusion and light.
As I read the story line was somewhat predictable, and yet as I read the threads was filled with compassion, love and a deep understanding. I could not help to think that as corrupt and soiled as the Catholic Church, what makes it foundationally good is the real story of love that people live by day in and day out. It is not the clergy and their doctrine that make the faith, but the real story of truth and goodness that will not be watered down nor go away.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Judith B
- 03-29-18
Enlightening. Thoughtful. Rare.
thank you for writing this one. very moving and worth reading again someday. no more words necessary.
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1 person found this helpful
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- Hollyn Chase
- 08-25-18
Great novel, awful audiobook
I tried listening to this but this brilliant author made a bad choice in narrating this himself. Read the book.
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2 people found this helpful
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- T. R.
- 05-12-18
Rare Gem
I find this book captured my full attention- an excellent historical novel that captures real issues with Christianity, in particular, Catholicism. There is no doubt that The Jewish people have paid a heavy price for the success of "The Church" throughout history. They have been, and continue to be, blamed for killing Christ. James Carroll weaves this story in a way that makes the conflict in the argument remain out in the open. I appreciate his style and honor his integrity to the factual elements he portrays.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Barbara
- 05-16-18
Reading Cadence
So difficult to tolerate the staccato reading. Rarely was it appropriate, but story is fascinating.
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4 people found this helpful
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- C. Ramos
- 07-05-21
A novel that explores the meaning of LOVE
This novel travels time to explore love in its many forms. Extremely moving and thought provoking.
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- PATT
- 06-17-20
Hard to listen?
I increased speed to 1.1 or 1.2 and found it much better. Great story, had compelling dialogue. Enjoyed this book.
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- MaryEllen Knecht
- 12-02-22
Compelling and thought provoking
In a story of timeless love, the words and life of a 12th-century philosopher and priest reach out to address 20th-century problems that remain relevant to the 21st-century reader. Characters search for their authentic selves, truth, forgiveness, and a relationship with the church. Loved it.
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- Susan V.
- 05-21-18
Could not get into it.
The author reads the book. His voice is calming. I fell asleep within minutes of listening to it.
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1 person found this helpful