The Scent of God: A Memoir

Here is a beautiful read! Beryl Singleton Bissell manages to tell the story of leaving a contemplative order after many difficult years with great kindess. While her experiences are hard, especially her struggles with anorexia and the theology of self-deprivation that supported it, she weaves the stories with compassionate reflections. These and the present-tense, second-person interludes that invite the reader to experience the monastic hours with her create a container bigger than the monastery--a world-view able to find continuity in the sacred both in and outside monastery walls. And the outside world is no piece of cake; her relationship with a priest is fraught with conflict, great love, and eventually loss. So the reverence and love of life that frames this story is remarkable. This book feels like a witness to love's mysteries. ( )

really good. very moving. i'm not even religious!. surprised not to have heard more of this book--because it's by a woman/ from minnesota? ( )

Although this book took a while to get going for me, by the halfway point I was completely hooked. This memoir does what the best of them do: it tells a story as compelling as anything you'll find in fiction, yet it rings true because the author is painfully honest in her own struggles and failings, so that you can believe in her triumphs. This book can be read on two levels, both of which resonated with me. On one level, you have a "forbidden love" story, the story of two people who fell in love with one another despite their lives and their decisions (and acceptance) that they would forgo romantic love. On this level, the book does not disappoint: it's one of the most moving love stories I've ever read, complete with all the ups and downs and insecurities of first (and in this case, great), love, but it manages to do something few fictional accounts of love do: it makes you really want to see the couple together in spite of the hardship they endure. Because the hardship was real and not contrived by an author to heighten romantic tension, it's that much more compelling.

On the second level, this book is an exploration of Beryl's relationship with Catholicism and with her faith as a whole. While it's a little harder for me to talk about this thread objectively, this was the thing about this book that really lodged beneath my ribs. The ebbs and flows of Beryl's faith will be familiar to most readers who desire or seek relationship with a higher power; but what was really inspiring was Beryl's ability to find God despite having to endure some of the hardest realities anyone should have to face, including the death of a child. This is a story of great love, great pain, and an even greater God. ( )

The Scent of God by Beryl Singleton Bissell is a work of fine art, reminiscent of a painting by Rubens or a haunting Saint-Saëns melody. The beautifully crafted memoir offers words that glisten like gems on each page. Lush imagery, redolent with heady scents and vibrant color, transports the reader to locales ranging from the sanctified to the exotic. Readers will savor every chapter of this alluring tale.

The story begins in 1947 in Saddle River, New Jersey. Beryl, one of four siblings in a Catholic family, catalogs her mortal sins at an early age and is riddled with guilt when her mother serves meat on Friday or the family misses Mass. Her father’s binges and the rage and panic his drinking elicits in her mother, cause Beryl to seek comfort in nature. With her siblings, she happily tramps through the lakeside woods - swimming, fishing, tobogganing, and exploring abandoned farmhouses. In sixth grade, Beryl begins attending a private boarding school run by Catholic nuns who teach her about a God of unconditional love. This knowledge calms and thrills the young girl, who longs for stability and acceptance.

When Beryl is thirteen, her father’s drinking causes him to lose his position as vice-president of a New York bank, but he is offered an alternate position in Puerto Rico. When the family relocates to the tropical island, Beryl draws inward, avoiding friends and life outside the home. Beryl’s sister’s popularity and her mother’s critical harping about her weight increase her sense of displacement. Witnessing the drowning of a young boy, however, brings her face to face with her own mortality and the superficiality of earthly success. This new knowledge, in combination with a mystical experience of God’s love and the breakup with her “first love” -- a handsome young Puerto Rican boy -- set her on a course toward a life of commitment to God whose love is eternal and unchanging.

At the age of eighteen, and in spite of her parent’s initial disapproval, Beryl enters the Monastery of Saint Clare in Bordentown, New Jersey. With visions of becoming a saint, she thrives on the simple goodness of the daily processes in the cloistered nunnery, enjoying working in the bakery, her daily prayers, and the quiet camaraderie of her sister nuns. Her experiences in the monastery are lovingly and honestly recounted, providing a rare glimpse into this life.

Twelve years later, Beryl is deeply ensconced in the tranquility of the monastery when she receives the news that her father has taken ill, and that she needs to return home to assist her mother with his care. Returning to the island reawakens her senses.

“I woke that morning to the sound of waves crashing on the beach below, the pink and gold of the rising sun playing across my face. Despite my father’s condition and my mother’s frailty, I felt a wild surge of happiness. Eight floors below my window, a receding wave shimmered back toward an oncoming breaker, leaving a froth of bubbles to mark the edges of its ride. A solitary man jogged along the beach, the wet sand forming silvery halos around his footprints.”

In the course of caring for her father, and in the most delectable and surprising twist of this true story, Beryl meets Padre Vittorio, a handsome Italian priest who preaches at the local church of Saint Jorge. At first irritated by the man, Beryl slowly finds herself falling in love as she gets to know him better, igniting the most painful yet wondrous struggle of her life.

It would spoil the story to reveal more. Suffice it to say that the segment of the book involving Vittorio is sensual and captivating, never offensive, and completely addictive. Be forewarned that The Scent of God will lodge in your heart and invade your dreams for years to come.

Thankfully, the author is working on a sequel to The Scent of God. This reader anxiously awaits the next chapter in Beryl’s delightful true-life saga. ( )