Books Briefly
"Mariette in Ecstasy" by Ron Hansen HarperCollins, $20 ----------------------
Ron Hansen has written two novels based on real-life outlaws: "Desperadoes" and "The Assassination of Jesse James by the Coward Robert Ford." Set in a dustily realistic Old West, both were models of straightforward narrative, compelling figures and deadpan depiction. His new novel, "Mariette in Ecstasy" strikes off, with only partial success, into different territory.
The time is 1906. A lovely, mysterious 17-year-old, daughter of a prominent local doctor, enters a convent in rural upstate New York. When she displays signs of the stigmata - bleeding from hands, feet, and her side, as did Jesus on the cross - both the nunnery and the community at large are thrown into turmoil. What follows is an elliptical, oblique story of strong passion, sexual repression and redemptive faith. Is Mariette's condition a miracle? The makings of a bizarre psychodrama? Or just a hoax?
Hansen is brilliant at evoking the hypnotic daily rituals and routines of convent life. Both the cloistered setting and the nuns' simple lives seem to emerge straight from the Middle Ages. The deliberately stilted, still-life language furthers a melodramatic, claustrophobic mood.
But a palette so intentionally limited requires great patience of the reader, and the obsessive nature of the story tends to tax endurance even further. The book's ultimate effect is beautiful, but bleakly so. I found myself wishing Hansen would cut to the chase - or, at least, to a more accessible world, like the ones he created for the James Gang and the Dalton Boys.