Cloistered

My Years as a Nun

By: Catherine Coldstream

Narrated by: Catherine Coldstream

Long-listed, NPR Best Book of the Year, 2024

This program is read by the author.

"A profoundly moving memoir which gripped me . . . 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 their members, can be dangerously vulnerable to threats from inside their walls.”—Mark Haddon, author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, The Porpoise and others

An astonishing memoir of twelve years as a contemplative nun in a silent monastery.

Cloistered takes the listener deep into the hidden world of a traditional Carmelite monastery as it approaches the third Millennium and tells the story of an intense personal journey into and out of an enclosed life of poverty, chastity, and obedience. Finding an apparently perfect world at Akenside Priory, in Northumberland, Catherine trusts herself to a group of twenty silent women, believing she is trusting herself to God. As the beauty and mystery of an ancient way of life enfold her, she surrenders herself wholly to its power, quite unaware of the complexity and dangers that lie ahead.

Cut off from the wider world for decades, the community has managed to evade accountability to any authority beyond itself. When Sister Catherine realises that a mesmerising cult of the personality, with the distortions it entails, has replaced the ancient ideal of religious obedience, she is faced with a dilemma. Will she submit to this, or will she be forced to speak out?

An exploration of the limits of trust, Cloistered shows us how far youthful idealism can take us along the road of self-surrender, and of how much harm is done when institutional flaws go unacknowledged. Catherine’s honest account of her time in the monastery–and her dramatic flight from it–is both a love song to a lost community and an exploration of what is most compelling, yet most potentially destructive when closed human groups become laws unto themselves.

A Macmillan Audio production from St. Martin’s Press.

©2024 Catherine Coldstream (P)2024 Macmillan Audio

Critic reviews

"This is a memoir of emotions felt viscerally. But there are also remarkable spiritual insights, intellectual reflections on life and death and, of course, plenty about the intense relationships that developed between Catherine, and the other sisters. Engrossing and moving.” - Belinda Jack, Author of George Sand: A Woman's Life Writ Large and The Woman Reader

“A profoundly moving memoir which gripped me . . . 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 their members, can be dangerously vulnerable to threats from inside their walls.” - Mark Haddon, author of The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Nighttime, The Porpoise and others

Fasinating and thoughtful

This book is beautifully written and performed. It provides a detailed story of cloisterd life and of a vocstional journey that evolves and changes much within a deep trusting faith and love of God.

Monastery or North Korean Prison Camp?

She went BACK!? Where the lunatics truly run the asylum?

Brainwashing and off the charts levels of mental illness and sadism used against the vulnerable. Meets all the criteria for a CULT of the most insidious kind.

Beautifully written however.

An Exquisite Memoir

Once upon a time I seriously considered the cloister. If I had entered it would have been about the same era as the author’s experience. Through the audiobook I heard her tell the story of her initial years as I had imagined them for myself. I visited monasteries frequently while traveling to be transported by the chanting, by the stone corridors, the humble accommodations. Her story was a vicarious living of what might have been, including similar challenges, if I’d chosen a different path. Many years later, as a health professional, I had the opportunity to make visits to care for some aging cloistered nuns. While advanced in years they struck me as quite childlike emotionally and intellectually. Surely they had developed in similarly protected and sheltered conditions. I hope that reforms in monasticism have evolved and gotten through to healthier models of community and spiritual development. I’m very grateful for the authors courage and vulnerability in excavating and telling this story.

Beautiful book

Catherine Cold stream has written Cloistered, a deeply personal and beautiful book about her years as a Carmelite nun. Her relationship with the God she believes in becomes a challenge, as does her relationship with the Order she has joined. This is a very human story where people, including nuns, act as people do. I highly recommend this book.

Unforgettable

Beautifully written and narrated on audio book . This genuine and compelling memoir of Catherine Coldstream's experience in the cloister will stay with me. Am grateful to have listened to this deeply spiritual work that incorporated both psychological and social dimensions to this moving story.