Cloistered

[A] beautifully written memoir…one reads with fascination, empathy and mounting alarm… it evolves into a spiritual thriller in which the experience of being a nun unravels into a nightmare as the monastery’s internal politics sour * Observer *‘An immersive, beautifully observed study of the monastic mind, and the forces that can disrupt and unsettle it. Reading it, I felt the gravitational pull of silence and ecstatic connection’ * Katherine May, author of Wintering *She writes stunningly of the natural world … The absorbing … narrative progresses rather like a thriller … Beautifully written * Financial Times *‘I admired [CLOISTERED] enormously for its lucid evocative prose, but most of all for the sincerity and candour with which Coldstream writes about her faith, as a transformative and intimate relation with God’ * Sarah Perry, author of The Essex Serpent *Coldstream is unsparing…but gives equal weight to the beauty and purpose she found there * The Times *‘A profoundly moving memoir which gripped me in a way I simply did not expect. It’s about spirituality and asceticism and silence and sisterhood, but also about how flawed human beings can abuse power and how hermetically sealed communities, which should care for and protect to their members, can be dangerously vulnerable to threats from inside their walls’ * Mark Haddon, author of The Porpoise *Both gripping and horrifying… [a] rich memoir * Daily Telegraph *‘What a wonderful, utterly illuminating work this is – it’s been a long time since I’ve read a book that has given me so much to think about, and resonated so deeply’ * Artemis Cooper *[An] engrossing, beautifully written memoir… I strongly recommend this book, both as a riveting human drama and as a fascinating glimpse into what goes on behind closed doors in a community of holy women * Mail on Sunday *‘Few books achieve what this does in giving a really physical sense of the monastic environment - its sounds and smells, the round of seasons, the sensations in the fingers as they work in kitchen or garden. Catherine Coldstream leaves us recognizing both the beauty and depth of this experience and the churning risks of a life where accountability and spiritual authority are constantly in tension’ * Rowan Williams, former Archbishop of Canterbury *

Catherine Coldstream was born in London, and grew up loving music, words, and books. After converting to Roman Catholicism in her twenties, she spent twelve years in a Carmelite monastery where she lived the life of a silent contemplative nun. Since leaving her community she has studied at the Universities of Oxford, East Anglia, and London, and taught theology, philosophy, and ethics in schools. The effects of her years as a nun have never left her and continue to inspire and inform her writing.