Haven is a slow moving tale of drama

Haven

Emma Donoghue Little, Brown

Last year’s most unlikely bestseller was Matrix, a novel by Lauren Groff about an obscure medieval poet named Marie de France and a 12th-century nunnery. Maybe two years of COVID seclusion had primed us for a story of monastic adventure, and certainly Groff’s rich style helped the book sing to many readers.

Now comes Emma Donoghue with Haven, a monastic story of her own. But Donoghue has ratcheted up the stakes by taking on a trifecta of bestseller killers: First, she moves the clock back even further, to around 600 AD. Second, she portrays a culture inhabited only by men. And third, her characters live and move and have their being in an atmosphere fully imbued with their primitive Christian faith.

In short, very few readers have been praying for a novel like this. But Haven creates an eerie, meditative atmosphere that should resonate with anyone willing to think deeply about the blessings and costs of devoting one’s life to a transcendent cause.

The novel opens with a kind of preface set at Cluain Mhic Nóis, a relatively new monastery with about three dozen monks in the centre of Ireland. Not 200 years have passed since St. Patrick converted the island to Christianity, but that’s more than enough time for this religious community to have lost some of its savour and fallen into a comfortable routine.

That, at least, is the critical opinion held by Artt, a legendary holy man, a living saint, who has dropped by while “carrying the light of the Gospel.” Artt speaks many languages and knows the paths of the stars. It’s rumoured that he’s read every book ever written — admittedly easier back in 600 AD, but still. Most impressive of all, he’s survived the plague with just a slight abbreviation of one little finger.

Then Artt announces that he’s had a divinely inspired dream, a vision of an island in the western sea, and that he intends to find it and establish a new monastery, a haven far from the sins of the world.

“Ours will be a sacred wandering,” Artt tells his two recruits, and for a time they are thrilled by the boundless generosity of God.