Reading post
Jun. 5th, 2026 09:21 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lucymonsterThe Employees by Olga Ravn, trans. Martin Aitken: This Danish novella tells the story of a corporate space expedition gone wrong through a series of transcribed statements from employees aboard the ship. The statements are framed as having been given to a review team sent by the head office; no further context is supplied, except what can be pieced together from the statements themselves. The employees comprise natural born humans and lab-made cybernetic individuals called humanoids. Conditions are dire; both kinds of employee are effectively slaves, and devotion to the company has been deeply embedded in their psyches. Despite this, a rudimentary sort of rebellion is fomenting. The higher-ups have been rolling out a series of cheap, easily scalable technologies designed to paper over the catastrophic emotional wounds they are inflicting on their workforce, the latest of which are a mysterious set of objects from an alien planet that seem to exert some sort of lulling effect on people who get close to them. This ends about as well as anyone who doesn't sit on a board of directors could have told you from the start.
So basically, this story is a critique of late capitalist office culture. The message is not exactly subtle, but the trappings are so enthrallingly weird and creative that it ends up feeling like a lot more than the sum of its parts.
And Then There Were Nuns by Jane Christmas: This is a memoir by an established travel writer and devout Anglican who spends a year trying to become a nun. My first temptation is to scrutinise whether she really meant to be a nun or had just scented another marketable adventure, but I'm intentionally slapping that impulse away, because the book is lovely and deserves to be taken on its merits. And regardless of her initial purity of intention, the experience takes Christmas to some very heavy places. A session of lectio divina near the start of the process stirs up the memories of a rape she's spent decades of her life pretending never happened, so while discerning a possible vocation and grappling with her religious identity, she also ends up having to walk this painful path of trauma healing.
I also suspect that Christmas' obvious unsuitedness to cloistered life is exactly what makes the book work: she makes a good mediator between the kind of woman who is capable of becoming a nun, and the kind of woman (hi) who is not remotely capable of becoming a nun but could stand to profit from learning more about their ways. Christmas' fantasies of a life spent in an aesthetically pleasing state of leisurely communion with God are promptly supplanted by a hefty chore load, a jam-packed worship timetable, and the demand for a total renunciation of self-will. It’s not the big picture stuff she ends up chafing against. It’s the petty deprivations, like the dowdy habits (Christmas considers herself a fashionista) and the annoyance of not being allowed to finish her game when the hour of recreation ends. I get this. I think almost all of us probably get this, regardless of our vocation. I would give my life for my kids without a moment’s hesitation but will I give my morning coffee? Will I close my browser window, right this second, and go do something that benefits them instead? Because that’s what convent life is set up to train nuns to do. And watching an ordinary, self-willed woman fail at it is somehow very inspiring: I couldn’t do it either, not properly, but perhaps I could start doing a little bit more of it here and there! And perhaps that would be better than nothing!
At one point Christmas shared a remark from a priest, that taking confession from nuns is like being stoned to death with popcorn. I think that image will stick with me for a long time to come.
So basically, this story is a critique of late capitalist office culture. The message is not exactly subtle, but the trappings are so enthrallingly weird and creative that it ends up feeling like a lot more than the sum of its parts.
And Then There Were Nuns by Jane Christmas: This is a memoir by an established travel writer and devout Anglican who spends a year trying to become a nun. My first temptation is to scrutinise whether she really meant to be a nun or had just scented another marketable adventure, but I'm intentionally slapping that impulse away, because the book is lovely and deserves to be taken on its merits. And regardless of her initial purity of intention, the experience takes Christmas to some very heavy places. A session of lectio divina near the start of the process stirs up the memories of a rape she's spent decades of her life pretending never happened, so while discerning a possible vocation and grappling with her religious identity, she also ends up having to walk this painful path of trauma healing.
I also suspect that Christmas' obvious unsuitedness to cloistered life is exactly what makes the book work: she makes a good mediator between the kind of woman who is capable of becoming a nun, and the kind of woman (hi) who is not remotely capable of becoming a nun but could stand to profit from learning more about their ways. Christmas' fantasies of a life spent in an aesthetically pleasing state of leisurely communion with God are promptly supplanted by a hefty chore load, a jam-packed worship timetable, and the demand for a total renunciation of self-will. It’s not the big picture stuff she ends up chafing against. It’s the petty deprivations, like the dowdy habits (Christmas considers herself a fashionista) and the annoyance of not being allowed to finish her game when the hour of recreation ends. I get this. I think almost all of us probably get this, regardless of our vocation. I would give my life for my kids without a moment’s hesitation but will I give my morning coffee? Will I close my browser window, right this second, and go do something that benefits them instead? Because that’s what convent life is set up to train nuns to do. And watching an ordinary, self-willed woman fail at it is somehow very inspiring: I couldn’t do it either, not properly, but perhaps I could start doing a little bit more of it here and there! And perhaps that would be better than nothing!
At one point Christmas shared a remark from a priest, that taking confession from nuns is like being stoned to death with popcorn. I think that image will stick with me for a long time to come.
no subject
Date: 2026-06-04 11:55 pm (UTC)LOL. Yeah, sounds like it. This concept is interesting though! Mysterious objects from space are an easy sell for me.
I definitely could not do the renunciation of self-will thing either. "Leisurely communion with God" is what I was picturing too, but no, they keep you busy and you don't get to set your own schedule. No thankee!
At one point Christmas shared a remark from a priest, that taking confession from nuns is like being stoned to death with popcorn. I think that image will stick with me for a long time to come.
Okay, this is both very funny, and I can't quite figure out what it means. I'm guessing. . . Their "confessions" are for things that aren't that serious, but they keep coming non-stop? Like, not hard-hitting, but never ending?
no subject
Date: 2026-06-05 04:44 am (UTC)