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    Exiles: A Memoir
    Exiles: A Memoir
    Exiles: A Memoir
    Ebook176 pages2 hours

    Exiles: A Memoir

    By Michael J. Arlen

    3.5/5

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    About this ebook

    Back in print, "a wry and moving . . . rare and minute accounting of growing up." (Time)

    Exiles is the story of two glamorous people—one, a beautiful aristocrat; the other, a self-made man, one of the most famous authors of the 1920s. In this slender volume, which was nominated for the 1970 National Book Award and helped reestablish the memoir as a genre, Michael J. Arlen evokes—with humor and honesty—his parents' seemingly charmed life in Hollywood and New York, his own childhood spent between homes and boarding schools, and the decline of a family full of love, joy, and pride in one another: in other words, a family as ordinary as it is unusual.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherMacmillan Publishers
    Release dateJun 17, 2014
    ISBN9781466873995
    Exiles: A Memoir
    Author

    Michael J. Arlen

    Michael J. Arlen's books include Exiles (nominated for a National Book Award), Passage to Ararat (winner of a National Book Award), and three collections of essays on television: Living-Room War, The View from Highway 1, and The Camera Age.

    Read more from Michael J. Arlen

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    Reviews for Exiles

    3.5/5

    56 ratings11 reviews

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    • 4/5
      I found this book an engrossing read. Gives the reader an ending and then work from the past back to that ending and weaving in the story of Gerard Manley Hopkins, an enigmatic but now famous poet. For people going through difficult situations, it is very profound.
    • 3/5
      Interesting biography of Gerard Manley Hopkins, the English Jesuit and poet. Struck by an article in the newspaper about 5 nuns lost in a shipwreck of the Deutschland, which struck a sandbar off the coast of England he begins to write a long poem on the subject, "The Wreck of the Deutschland", which has since been declared a classic of its genre and Hopkins' masterwork. The crew hadn't been able to see through bad weather and fog and miscalculated their route. The book alternates among Hopkins' life, that of each of the nuns and how they respond to the shipwreck, and how members of the crew deal with the catastrophe. Somewhat dry and pedestrian. The text of the poem was given in the back. I've always liked this poem since reading it in English lit in college years ago, so I was glad to find a book on the subject. The title "Exiles": the nuns consider themselves exiles from Heaven; also, due to a decree from Bismarck, who ruled Germany at the time--the Falk laws: they are exiles from their native land, on their way to America. In a way, you could call Hopkins an exile too.
    • 5/5
      This is very close to a biography in tone and intent. Hansen, however, alternates his telling of Hopkin's last 10 years with a re-telling of the wreck of the Deutschland and the death of 5 nuns who were travelling on that ship to re-settle in America. It's a beautifully written, thoughtful book and I think I'm how in love with Gerard Manley Hopkins.
    • 2/5
      I powered through and finished before midnight. This should have been a moving book, but I just found it dull. There were sections that were interesting and read like non-fiction and that was the best part of the book. This is the second book by this author that I've been disappointed in, I think there won't be a third.
    • 5/5
      I've always loved Gerard Manley Hopkins' poems, and wondered why there weren't more of them (37 in all I think). This book is a wonderful novel and accounting of a life that was wondrous, sweet, and sad, all at the same time...so much talent, so much devotion, so much waste -- something like Van Gogh's genius and sorrow. A very good book, but terribly depressing. I wonder how much of the sadness of this account of his life was truly Hopkins and how much the author's.
    • 3/5
      This could have been great, instead Hansen can't decide if he writing a novel or a nonfiction essay. Regardless, it's a sad story, and I like those. Anyone who has ever felt called to religious order will appreciate the text a lot more.
    • 4/5
      Exiles: a Novel. Ron Hansen. 2008. This fascinating novel is based on the life of Gerard Manley Hopkins and his composition of the poem, “The Wreck of the Deutschland,” which was based on real ship wreck that occurred in 1875 in which 5 German nuns were among the people who did not survive. Hopkins was in a Jesuit seminary when the wreck occurred. The author moves back and forth between Hopkins life, the lives of the nuns, and the wreck and presents a fascinating portrait of Germany and England in the late 1800s. Hansen is a marvelous writer. I plan to re-read Mariette in Ecstasy and get some more of his books to read.
    • 3/5
      A novel based on history. About Gerard M Hopkins. Focuses on his writing of the poem about the wreck of the Deutschland. So the novel ends up telling the story of both Hopkins and 5 nuns who died on the ship. An interesting premise. Learned about Hopkins. Some nice passages. Not sure this book will linger in my memory. But it did make me want to go back to Hopkins's poetry.
    • 4/5
      Ron Hansen's blend of biography and novel makes for an interesting read that opens up a little-known (at least to me) tragedy peopled with fascinating characters. The people, of course, make the book worth reading, especially the five German Franciscan nuns who were exiled to America but died in a horrible shipwreck before they could get there. Their individual personalities shine from beneath their austere habits in ways that could indeed inspire poet Gerard Manley Hopkins to pen a 35-stanza ode to their death based on newspaper accounts of the disaster.
    • 5/5
      I adored this book; it's a truly remarkable work. I enjoyed every page of it, wished it were longer, and was sad to see it end. It's an odd book, made up of two separate stories--the first that of five emigre German nuns en route to the US who are killed in a shipwreck and the second that of poet Fr. Gerard Manley Hopkins, S.J.--that are unified only in the priest's writing of a poem about the nuns. Their stories are small but oddly heroic. And Hansen recounts them in a way that is deeply respectful and moving and yet does not fail to acknowledge the question that was constantly on my mind at least: what they're all doing with their lives in the first place. This book is a true gem.
    • 3/5
      Ron Hansen's Exiles combines the story of the Winter of 1875 shipwreck of the Deutschland and the life of English poet Gerard Manley Hopkins. Hopkins was a young, budding poet who abandoned his art to become a Jesuit priest. It was the news of the shipwreck, with the loss of many lives, including those of five nuns, which jolted Hopkins creative juices back to life. The incident inspired his poem The Wreck of the Deutschland.At the time there was a wave of religious intolerance toward Catholics in Germany, and the nuns were being 'exiled' to continue their work in America (see The May or Falk Laws). Hansen's hook is that Hopkins felt a connection to them beyond their co-religiosity. To Hansen at least, Hopkins was an 'exile; of sorts from his creative self.Well. I don't recall what prompted me to read this book. It probably came to my attention from a review. I;m not a reader of shipwreck fiction, but I am partial to fictional biographies - and I believe I was reading Fall of Frost, the fictional-hybrid account of the life of Robert Frost at the time. Both poet's dontcha know.The book did not impel me to delve into Manley's poetry - mea culpa but not my cuppa from the snippets in the book (and my attempt to actually tread the poem itself, which was never published in his lifetime). The theology of the book held little interest for me either. I must say though, that the shipwreck itself (once it happened) was gripping reading and included some memorable scenes. A squalling child was left behind and was knocked flat by the sea. With the next swell, Carl Dietrich Meyer thought, she would be gone. But then a gymnastic seaman rappelled down the steep cliff of the rigging, as agile and unafraid as a chimpanzee, and he was just twenty feet above the little girl when his foot caught in a lanyard and he plummeted headfirst. The sailor was secured to the yardarm by a legging, and in the sway of the mast he soared out over the sea upside down, and then gravity asked him back again in a glorious swing that ended when his neck struck a taut guy wire and his head was sliced off. The sea took the head as its own, but his body hung by its leg rope throughout the night, spilling blood and tolling the hours.Whew! One or two other such gruesome scenes, but the way Hansen handled the deaths of the nuns was surely the best part of the book. And he does a creditable job of delineating the characters of the five sisters in the alternating sections of the book. Each is given a brief introduction to include some early biographical information and their decisions to dedicate their lives to the Church. On the other side, he closes out their lives individually in affecting prose.For me though, this novel took far too long to takeoff, but finished off rather nicely.

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    Exiles - Michael J. Arlen

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