Evensong

...Tony and Chase may be intended to remind us of the angels whom Abram and Sarah entertain unawares (a parallel that extends to a joyful and unexpected pregnancy at the book's end...

...Nothing is going to change significantly in this community, or any other," Margaret declares, "until each of us makes room for God's kingdom inside ourselves and lets it change us from within....The nearest thing to a manifesto [Jesus] ever expressed was love the Lord your God with all your heart, soul, and mind, and love your neighbor as yourself...

...inquires the suddenly widowed tourist in whom Margaret has confided during the drive from the hospital to the woman's hotel...

...I liked the description of the 8 a.m...

...And I wished, fervently, for the writing to arouse my enthusiasm...

...No sooner does Margaret offer him a place to sleep than Chase Zorn, the disaffected son of a theme park entrepreneur and a protegee of Adrian's, gets kicked out of Fair Haven for drinking and comes to live with the Bonners...

...Time and place augur well: Advent 1999 in a western North Carolina mountain town provides the sturdy frame of a reflective liturgical season, the added intensity of premillennial anticipation, and the small, close-knit community of good old Southern folks...

...Instead, I found myself in agreement with the young man in the novel who observes, "Well, I for one...will be glad when this wearisome millennium pageant is over...

...This is not Godwin's first time up to the plate with this particular protagonist: Evensong is a sequel to the highly regarded Father Melancholy's Daughter (1991...

...First up is Tony, an aging itinerant monk of suspicious habit and uncertain motive...

...Throughout her troubles, the small vexations as well as the near tragedies, Margaret seems to lack connection to the God she has presumably been called to serve...

...Margaret replies, "Right now...

...Commonweal 27 April 23,1999...

...Elizabeth Kirkland Cahill is co-author (with Joseph Papp) of Shakespeare Alive...

...It is God...

...In the midst of all the turmoil, MarCommonweal 26 April 23,1999 garet handles her daily priestly work with care and concern, presiding at a wedding, ministering to a tourist whose husband has unexpectedly died, noting the gradual mental failure of an Altar Guild stalwart...

...On the eve of the millennium, all is not well in High Balsam, or in Margaret's marriage...

...It is unlikely that even a very intelligent adolescent would utter the sentence which Chase declaims to Adrian about the school's purpose: "To provide a fair haven, in the full sense of what both words can mean, for messes like me, until we can find our own structures and learn how to think and feel...

...a few special objects that focused their attention on something timeless they were drawn to, whether they understood it or not...

...There's really just one thing missing from the picture of Margaret as a priest...

...I waited, patiently, for the narrative to engage me...

...Margaret Bonner is rector of All Saints High Balsam, a "plum parish" in a Smoky Mountain resort town...

...Godwin accurately conveys the details and atmosphere of a Southern Episcopal parish...

...I watched, hopefully, for the characters to move me...

...I'll skip most of the one that compares New York City to bouillabaisse ("the whole brew bobbed with equal chunks of splendor and desolation"), and simply cite Margaret's unspoken prayer over her husband's sleeping, feverish form: "Let spaciness be your air bag against the impact of too-sudden clarity...

...Margaret has found a perfect partner in Adrian, who savors pancakes "that melt like hosts in your mouth," and defines sin as: "A falling short from your totality....Choosing to live in ways that interfere with the harmony of that totality...

...When they join up with the troubled Adrian, though, they bear more resemblance to a trinity of prodigals: Tony, the prodigal father, Adrian, the prodigal husband, and Chase, the prodigal son...

...Where is God for you, if you don't mind my asking...

...With an answer like this, she might as well have been a social worker...

...Godwin, or someone in her employ, evidently did a lot of research...

...Ouch...

...Her husband, Adrian Bonner, also a priest, serves as chaplain at Fair Haven, a progressive school for emotionally troubled teenagers...

...Into the lives of Margaret and Adrian come three strangers seeking hospitality...

...This is a far cry from the prose or the theology of the Book of Common Prayer, through which Episcopalians confess that "we have erred and strayed from our ways like lost sheep, we have followed too much the devices and desires of our own hearts, we have offended against thy holy laws...

...The peaceful summerresort community has suffered a number of unsettling, even violent events— arson, murder, betrayal, all of which point, perhaps, to premillennial socioeconomic implosion...

...Sunday morning service: "a few determined souls setting forth in the first light to go and sit on wooden pews in an old brick building with...

...Definitely in the car as we talk and exchange things...

...Infelicitous metaphors mar the text...

...Somewhere there must be a warehouse full of index cards: here is what the fire chief said about how fires spread, here are the Advent notes from the female priest in North Carolina, here are the suggestions about Chase's character development made by the boys from Christ School...

...In the midst of all this communal trouble, Margaret is privately questioning her marriage to the middle-aged, dour, monastic Adrian...

...Still, although raised Episcopalian, as a Catholic convert I am no longer strictly bound by the Anglican code of conduct, so I can say it: Evensong disappoints...

...Richer still, the priest in question is a woman, which will be interesting to many readers, timely to some, novel to others...

...Elizabeth KirKland Cahill Evensong, which chronicles several pivotal weeks in the life of a young Southern Episcopal priest, appears to have several things going for it...

...The third visitor to High Balsam, in her own way also a prodigal, is the fiery evangelist Grace Munger, who has come back to her childhood town to organize a Millennial Birthday March for Jesus...

...The dialogue is stilted, and largely undifferentiated among the characters...

...Margaret, like a sensible Episcopalian, wants nothing to do with it, and her spirited attacks on Grace's brand of fundamentalism constitute some of the better moments of the novel...

...Unfortunately, Godwin fails to integrate all of these wonderful notes into a work of imagination or transcendence, and leaves them to float on the surface of the novel, not unlike those bobbing chunks in the bouillabaisse...

...In the face of all this it feels churlish, downright un-Episcopalian, not to praise the book...

...The publicity machine for the book has been formidable—interviews, full-page ads in national publications, and readings in bookstores from Asheville to Greenwich...