Monica FurlongReseñas

Nostalgia galore! The first half of the book is definitely the best part.

Women Pray: Voices through the Ages, from Many Faiths, Cultures and Traditions by Monica Furlong. Section 5: Devotions and Prayer. This book, suggested to me by Annette King, is a compilation of prayers, poems and prose by women of many faiths. Why do we need a book of prayers by women? It is only in the last few decades that women have been praying aloud in public as more and more denominations grant women worship leader roles, and turn to women for their unique life view, world view, and wisdom. But there are many early religious women whose writings form a rich history that are included here: Hildegard von Bingen (German Benedictine, born 1098), Julian of Norwich (English mystic and theologian, b. 1342), Rabi’a (Muslim saint and Sufi mystic, b. 713), and Mirabai (Hindu mystic, b. 1498) being a few.
More recent women such as the American suffragist Elizabeth Cady Stanton criticized the way the Bible was used to subordinate women. So she and a committee of 26 women wrote their own version, The Woman’s Bible! Females Cecil Frances Alexander (“All Things Bright and Beautiful,” “Once in Royal David’s City.” b. 1818 in Ireland) and Christina Rossetti (“In the Bleak Midwinter,” “Love Came Down at Christmas,” b. 1803, London) have shaped our worship and our inner visual imagery through their hymns. And all along I thought Cecil was a man!
One striking feature of women’s prayers is that they seek a connection with women of the past who were often illiterate, giving voice to those often nameless, voiceless women who came before us. Childbirth, child and family care are themes. Women’s past powerlessness is transformed into power – the power to approach God as one of God’s beloved. A love of the natural world, the dailiness of living, self-discovery, birth and death, and the power of forgiveness are all themes you will find here.
I like that the editor has included women’s voices from a variety of religious traditions. This shows us the commonalities, reflections, dreams and hopes all women share. Ladies, this book is especially for you. Annette and I both hope you enjoy it!

absolutely top banana.
it's a beautiful book full of hope and compassion and humanity.
ooo, it's proper lovely.

00002025

Sequel to Wise child and Juniper.

Prequel to Wise child

I read this because it was a friend's beloved childhood book, and I'm so glad I did. It hit me right in my pagan, "living in the rhythm," kitchen-witch heart. I have aspired to be Juniper my entire adult life, and I didn't even know it.

This would be a hard sell for most contemporary kids I know. It's slow. The pacing feels old-fashioned: languorous descriptions of the light falling across the floor, the milking of the cow, the gradual coming to terms with being Juniper's ward... punctuated by occasional adventures. The GR description makes it sound like Wise Child choosing between Maeve and Juniper is the major story arc. It is part of the main emotional arc, which is Wise Child choosing Juniper over both Maeve and her village, but as a plot point Maeve is one two-chapter adventure among others. I probably wouldn't try it on anyone who isn't used to reading old-school agricultural-adventure books. It's most akin in feel to "what if [b:Understood Betsy|347151|Understood Betsy|Dorothy Canfield Fisher|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1388985862s/347151.jpg|3234038] were set in [b:The Mists of Avalon|402045|The Mists of Avalon (Avalon, #1)|Marion Zimmer Bradley|https://images.gr-assets.com/books/1388857089s/402045.jpg|806813]?" I am here. for. that, it turns out, but I'm not sure most current kids are.

For those of us impassioned by herbs, many of us can point to this book as key to igniting that love. How many of us would love to be mentored and cared for by Juniper, and then yearn to grow into a wise woman such as her? Wise Child herself is real and opinionated. It's fun and inspiring to experience how she grows into becoming a "doran," one who is connected with all that is, all of nature.

About a young girl named Ninnoc, only child of a King and Queen is sent away for a year and a day to learn magic - although she mostly learns healing arts centered around roots and herbs. When she returns, she discovers that evil magic has taken over her father's kingdom.

LibraryThing is the greatest thing ever for so many reasons, and not the least is finding books in a series one read as a child that one wasn't aware existed. I adored Juniper and Wise Child as a kid and read those books over and over. In 2003, Colman was published, just after the death of author Monica Furlong, and I am so pleased to have been able to find out about it and finish the story of these amazing characters.
(SPOILERS for the previous 2 books in the series)
Wise Child and Juniper have escaped from Wise Child's village along with her cousin, Colman. They retreat with Finbar to hopefully find succor in Juniper's home country of Cornwall. Unfortunately Juniper's Aunt Meroot and her consort have sacked the kingdom and kidnapped Juniper's brother in another attempt to seize power. Working together, the group must rescue Brangwyn and restore the kingdom.
This story isn't quite as strong as the previous two, but I am grateful for the opportunity to revisit these great characters and put a cap on their tale.

I remember being initially disappointed that the other book in this series wasn't a continuation of Wise Child's story, but a prequel about Juniper's childhood. However, I wasn't disappointed for long as it's such a wonderful story.
Princess Ninnoc of Cornwall is sent to apprentice with Euny, an old woman who seems to have the ear of Ninnoc's father, the Regulus, and also, mystifyingly, refers to Ninnoc as "Juniper". The spoiled princess is at first distressed by Euny's spare existence and uninvolved teaching style, but soon finds the experience valuable. Aunt Meroot, her father's older sister is covetous of power and schemes to seize it by setting her own son on the throne. Juniper must resist her aunt, save her cousin and possibly the entire kingdom.½

This was one of my most beloved books as a child and I'm gratified that it is still a delight to read as an adult.
Due to her grandmother's demise, her father's being away at sea and her mother's....well, not being around, young Wise Child is suddenly in need of adult supervision and a home in which to live. Juniper offers to take her in, and though Wise Child is, like others in the village, wary of the mysterious woman (witch?), she swallows her fear and agrees. The somewhat spoiled but definitely precocious Wise Child is taught the cultivation of herbs, mixing of healing potions, teas and elixirs as well as how to do simple household chores. She's a bit of a brat, but that's kind of to be expected considering her circumstances. Juniper is patient, kind and wise as well as loving and understanding and the relationship between the two grows. Conflict comes from without, though, when Wise Child's mother suddenly decides to reappear.
Furlong's world is well-built, her characters are engaging and dynamic and the subject matter is fascinating. I would recommend this book to all young readers.½

Abandoned by both her parents, 9-year-old Wise Child goes to live with the witch woman Juniper, who begins to train her in the ways of herbs and magic.

prequel to Wise Child. The only child of the king of Cornwall, Juniper enjoys the easy life of a medieval princess. Still, something compels her to leave the palace to study with her godmother, Euny, a harsh but wise woman who teaches the girl about herbs, healing, and the magic within nature.

For many, at least of my reading generation who were just too young to miss the turbulent sixties and publication of the Seven Storey Mountain, Furlong’s biography of Merton was the first oeuvre we grasped into his life and work and meaning. Furlong wrote well, tenderly and with a fine scholarly grasp of her subject, and her book deserves a top shelf place in the Merton catalogue.

Yet something is missing. Not, as some would wish, the salacious details of did he didn’t he with Margie Smith, which really are none of our business, or the similarly breathy suspicions that he committed suicide (likewise not our business), but something deeper, something in the narrative that catapults him from zany, questing, terribly human monk to celebrity. In this telling it happens too soon, too inexplicable. One moment he’s a tortured soul, exorcising his demons though institutionally imposed flagellation, the next he an exhausted celebrity (still exorcising his demons though institutionally imposed flagellation).

I need to know more of the journey from tonsure to Seven Storey Mountain, know more of the writer in Merton that refused to be suppressed by the Trappist regime he chose. And I need to know more of the spiritual and sociological vacuum in which Seven Storey Mountain arrived and exploded across collective consciousness, catapulting its author to fame. I remember seeing Seven Storey Mountain on my elder confreres’ shelves, nestled alongside Carson's Silent Spring and Pirsig's Zen and the Art and Richard Fariña’s Been Down … what zeitgeist did Merton tap to be there? For an older generation, that of my parents', it even found a place alongside H. V. Morton (and Winston Churchill!). How did it and how did Merton come to register on the searching, collective consciousness of post war generations? What was the connection between the collective zeitgeist and Merton’s personal angst?

Furlong only hints at the end of her study at the commonality of monastic experience, transcending religious and cultural barriers, that Merton was embracing. I felt readers needed to know more of the individual Merton’s journey to that point, and more of the collective malaise that catapulted this angsty monk to stardom. Seven Storey Mountain is after all no easy read, and presumably it had to overcome readers' inertia to have the impact it had, it had to tap into enough spiritual hunger to overcome collective ennui and be read in an era that would soon opt instead for Chicken Soup for the Soul or One Minute Wisdom.

That said, Furlong’s biography was a powerful entry point for many to Merton, and deserves its place in the inner sanctum or Mertonalia.

Fills in a lot of the blanks from his autobiography. Ironic, his autobiography is ' In My Own Way ' , which is exacty was this guy was, in his own way. He couldn't get out of his own way and that's what destroyed him.

Very nice book! Of course, it's a childrens fantasy book - a bit predictable, a bit black-and-white concerning good and evil. But it's well written, it captured me and it had a lot of elements I really liked (an owl as a pet :D).

Wise Child is a quiet fantasy story set in medieval Scotland. A nine year old girl called Wise Child is taken in by Juniper, the isolated village witch. When Wise Child’s mother, a sorceress who uses her powers for her own gain, reappears, Wise Child will have to choose between two ways of life.

Wise Child is clearly aimed at younger readers. It tends to get shelved as YA, but I’d say MG would possibly be more accurate. It’s short, relatively simple, and has a coming of age theme. Yet, I think it can still be appreciated by older readers. Somehow it reminds me of Le Guin’s The Tombs of Atuan.

A lot of fantasy stories tend to be on a large scale – battles, apocalypses, struggles for the throne, and so on. Wise Child has a much smaller scale and focus. One of the repeating messages of the book is the value of everyday life. Accepting people who are different than you (say, the village witch) is also a moral at the heart of Wise Child. The messages are obvious, but they never become outright preachy.

I didn’t find the plot itself particularly compelling. The struggle Wise Child is facing with the conflict between her mother and Juniper felt like a foregone conclusion. In addition, an the climax was composed of a completely different conflict which never felt quiet satisfying.

Wise Child didn’t work for me for some reason. Perhaps that isn’t too surprising, given that I’ve compared it to the Earthsea novels I’ve read, which I also wasn’t a huge fan of. It’s not that I disliked Wise Child, it’s just that I never felt much of an emotional involvement. I wouldn’t discourage anyone from reading it, but it’s not going to be a book I go out of my way to recommend.

Originally posted on The Illustrated Page.

Published posthumously, this is the sequel to [book: Wise Child]. When Wise Child and Juniper are accused of witchcraft by their village, they escape with Finbar, Cormac and Colman and travel to Juniper’s homeland, where she lived first as a spoiled princess and then as an apprentice under Euny. Juniper’s previously happy country suffers under the rule of Meroot and the Grey Knight. Juniper and her friends join her countrymen in overthrowing the tyrannical rule. Unlike the first two books in the series, [book: Colman] suffers from stilted, stiff dialog and a plot that feels like its going through the motions. In fact, I found it unreadable.

I was extremely disappointed in this book. The author took a
revered and popular Catholic saint and basically turned her into
a sniveling brat with success hungry relatives (also nuns). The
negativity in this book was almost overwhelming. I might have
stopped reading it, but I was hoping for at least some redeeming
quality. I did not find it.

It feels unfinished, like a number of crucial sections are omitted, or are only summarized.½

“Wise Child” is the first in a young adult trilogy set in ancient Scotland. The Wise Child of the title does not bear that nickname out of respect at first; it’s a sarcastic term for a child who thinks they know more than others. She’s spoiled and lazy. In the care of her grandmother because her father is at sea and her mother has run away to greener pastures, she finds herself out of a home when the old woman dies. When the nine year old is ‘auctioned’, she finds herself taken in by Juniper, an outsider who does healing and follows the old, pre-Christian religion. Wise Child is terrified; rumor has it that Juniper is in league with Satan, and that horrible things will happen to anyone go is taken to her house. Thankfully, like much of the wisdom children share with each other, these things are untrue. Wise Child has to do a lot of work at Juniper’s house and doesn’t like that, but it’s a far cry from being a human sacrifice. With Juniper, she starts learning things- to read and write and work with herbs- and finds it enjoyable- most of the time. Her life is peaceful, until her mother- who has powers herself and uses them for personal gain - decides she wants her daughter to come live with her, and then village priest decides it’s time to get rid of the local witch.

It’s a very good story, written for ages 10 and up, and interesting enough for adults. It captures what life was like in that era; the enormous amount of work it took to stay alive, the superstitions, the power that Christian priests had even back then when the church young, and in a setting that far away from Rome. The description of Wise Child’s education and introduction to the old religion is fascinating. I had a couple of problems with the book; there are a few anachronisms (there were no fuchsias in the old world in that time and place) and the fact that while the other characters seemed realistic (Wise Child vacillates between happy and fretful at having to work so hard, which any 8 year old would), Juniper seems too good to be true. Not one, no matter what Wise Child or the villagers do, does she ever get mad, frightened or even mildly irritated. Was her training to be a doran so thorough that she attained a complete state of Zen composure? I know that the old religion is being portrayed as being all positivity and love, but Juniper could have stood to have a little bit of negative emotion to make her more human. And, this is not a problem but an observation: while the cover is beautiful in most ways with the herbs and the Celtic designs, the big eyes and facial expressions reminded me of those paintings by Keane in the 1960s, the ones with children with the big, dead, eyes that always creeped me out. But that’s just me.

Fills in a lot of the blanks from his autobiography. Ironic, his autobiography is ' In My Own Way ' , which is exacty was this guy was, in his own way. He couldn't get out of his own way and that's what destroyed him.

I'm a pretty firm believer in "if the book art is stunning, the story will be also"...it's back-fired on me a few times, I'm sure, but in this case, it doesn't. If you're picking up Wise Child, go ahead and pick up Juniper. And while you're at it, find a copy of Colman too (the third book in the trilogy that came out 14 years after Juniper - side note: I only learned of this book the other day, so I have yet to read it).

Wise Child is taken in by Juniper, the village healer, who is feared by the townspeople because of her powers as a doran (or witch, as they call her). Set in what feels like medieval Britain, the story follows Wise
Child as she shuns her teacher, yet slowly learns to love and admire her. It's only when Wise Child's biological mother, Maeve, (a beautiful, yet darkly self-absorbed sorceress) arrives to tempt Wise Child to follow her way of life that Wise Child learns what she is capable of and who she wants to become.

Captivating story great fantasy setting strong women = a book you need to buy.

(Originally posted on powells.com)

Monica Furlong has done an exceptional job of accurately describing the people and conditions in Balgo (Wirrumanu), Australia’s most remote Aboriginal community. For the last four years that I lived in Australia, I was privileged to have been counted among the friends of Margaret Bumblebee (Yintjurra Naparula), Senior Law Woman (Elder) and noted artist. We communicated as one grandmother to another, neither of us having an easy time of understanding the other. And she gave me my name, Yurrungarli Nagala, “my mother’s mother, the youngest one,” she said. With other kartiya (white women), in 2009 I was invited to participate in Law Camp, dancing with, eating with, and listening to the stories told by Balgo’s women Elders.

Furlong has taken me one step further. In retrospect, she has enriched my experience with her careful research and reporting about the culture and spiritual beliefs of the indigenous Australians who have chosen to live isolated from white Australia’s cities and towns. She has answered for me questions I didn’t know to ask, as well as filling in so many of the blanks in my knowledge.

There are other books, but I doubt any of them are a match for Furlong’s Flight of the Kingfisher for accuracy and a sincere effort to compassionately understand these people who belong to the land where their ancestors have lived for 60,000 years or more. With her easygoing, straightforward prose and skills of a professional writer of the first order, I feel the heat of the summer sun, the taste of the red dirt stirred by a whiff of wind, the sound of the women laughing as they greet one another in a native tongue or the Aboriginal English they use to communicate with other language groups. Furlong has brought all this to life, offering me the opportunity to return for a visit any time I wish.