Beginning the World

Karen Armstrong relived her seven years as a nun in Through the Narrow Gate, a compelling depiction of the cloistered life that received widespread acclaim. Now she returns with the even more fascinating account of her life, after leaving the convent, the story of a young woman of twenty-four totally unprepared for the shock of confronting the real world. Writing with both sensitivity and wit, Karen describes the agonies of adjustment to a world in which people touched each other, laughed, drank wine…made love. She tells of her painful realization that her body and even her mind were resisting the changes she was imposing on them, to the point that she began to doubt her sanity. But she also writes of the tenderness of friendship and the awakening of passion, the growing understanding that the soul could not be saved at the expense of the body.