MOUNT CARMEL BOOK CLUB
Fall is upon us and we hope you are settling into “sweater weather” with great books. This October, both groups are reading Maggie O’Farrell’s Hamnet. The book is available in the BCCLS library system.
Our Next Meeting:
Tuesday, October 12th
9:15 AM & 7:30 PM
Titus Room/Conference Room/Zoom
Interested in joining?
Contact Elliot Guerra or Mary Ann at the Church Office.
We’re reading . . .
Hamnet by Maggie O’Farrell
Hamnet is a 2020 novel by Maggie O’Farrell. It is a fictional account of Shakespeare’s son, Hamnet, who died at age 11 in 1596. It won the 2020 Women’s Prize for Fiction, the Fiction Prize at the 2020 National Book Critics Circle Awards and the 2021 Dalkey Literary Awards ‘novel of the year. The novel was included on 15 lists of the best books of 2020. It was also shortlisted for the 2021 Walter Scott Prize and longlisted for the 2021 Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence in Fiction.
“Catholics live in an enchanted world, a world of statues and Holy water, stained glass and votive candles, saints and religious medals, rosary beads and holy pictures. But these Catholic paraphernalia are mere hints of a deeper and more pervasive religious sensibility which inclines Catholics to see the Holy lurking in creation. As Catholics, we find our houses and our world haunted by a sense that the objects, events, and persons of daily life are revelations of grace. The central symbol (of religion) is God. One’s “picture” of God is in fact a metaphorical narrative of God’s relationship with the world and the self as part of the world. …The Catholic “classics” assume a God who is present in the world, disclosing Himself in and through creation. The world and all its events, objects, and people tend to be somewhat like God. The Protestant classics, on the other hand, assume a God who is radically absent from the world, and who discloses (Himself) only on rare occasions (especially in Jesus Christ and Him crucified). The world and all its events, objects, and people tend to be radically different from God.” — The Catholic Imagination, Andrew Greeley