Godric

If you think a novel about a saint is likely to be a dry and dusty sort of thing, think again. Godric, a 12th-century saint--born of Anglo-Saxon parents in Norfolk almost to the year of the Norman invasion (1066 for those of you long unschooled!)--was a peddler and wanderer long before he settled into the life of a hermit in northern England, led there by the famous hermit St Cuthbert, who tells him, "your true nesting place lies farther on", and "until you reach it, every other place you find will fret you like a cage."

In Godric Frederick Buechner captures the voice and the times of this saint with a style that recalls the richly alliterative language of Middle English poetry. So too does it recall the beautiful earthiness of that literature, reminding us that this time of deep spirituality was also a time of real flesh and blood folk. And in some ways this is the pivotal point of this delightful (and at times comic) novel: these saints, like those that live among us today, become saints not by leaving the body behind but by finding a way to live more deeply within it. They find a way to turn it to glory. --Doug Thorpe

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View books by Frederick Buechner.

Thought-provoking and disturbing. - Rated
The lasciviousness and depravity Buechner presents in this medieval monk and the emptiness of his ascetic attempts to discipline his own lusts are enough to disgust the reader -- until the reader begins to recognize that he or she is not that entirely different...

This book is dark and oppressive -- but in such a way that the reader is drawn to it, identifying with the miserable struggles of the title character. It's not the easiest of books to read, and not likely the type of feel-good book you'll want to lounge on the beach and read, but it's certainly a book that should not be missed!

Come, be baptized - Rated
In Godric, Frederick Buechner baptizes his readers into the waters of their own depravity--it is cold and chilling and real like Wear. And in the Jordan, he washes them in the honest prayer that flows from the lips of this old saint , pouring out upon the surface of the readers souls and, if they are listening, of their eyes. Rough poetry, beautifully crafted to seem wrecklessly gnawed. The book is humanity and the world. It redeems the readers heart.

Buy this book and read it once a year. - Rated
Buechner's novel on the paradoxical coexistence of grace and depravity in humans is the finest work on the subject I know of short of Romans, Chapter 7. The language Buechner uses is a mirror of the subject -- gritty and rough-hewn but colorful and lyrical at the same time. It paints a refreshingly clear picture of God's grace in the midst of man's sinfulness.

Beyond good, strange, lyrical, disturbing. - Rated
Buechner does a beautiful job of pulling you through the life story of a man who has done more un-holy acts than just about anyone, and yet is somehow the most holy man you will ever meet. Godric has feet planted solidly in heaven and on the earth, and the pain of that seperation is achingly felt as the story is told.