The Nuns In 'Agatha Of Little Neon' Don't Fly Or Sing, But They Will Stay With You

TERRY GROSS, HOST:

This is FRESH AIR. When's the last time you read a moving and deadpan funny novel about religious life, faith and doubt? Our book critic Maureen Corrigan says she has one to recommend. It's called "Agatha Of Little Neon," and it's by first-time novelist Claire Luchette.

MAUREEN CORRIGAN, BYLINE: I was a Catholic schoolgirl during a strange moment in the 1960s when Catholicism infiltrated American popular culture. For a brief time, nuns, in particular, were everywhere. "The Flying Nun," starring a buoyant Sally Field, was on TV. The Singing Nun appeared on "The Ed Sullivan Show," and her life was made into a movie. There was "The Trouble With Angels" and the mother superior of all nun movies, "The Sound Of Music." Nuns, of course, have greatly diminished in numbers since the '60s. And in recent decades, when they do make an occasional appearance on screen, they're often grim, even baroque characters like Meryl Streep's Sister Aloysius in "Doubt" or Jessica Lange's Sister Jude in "American Horror Story." The implication is that there must be something off about a woman who would choose such a life of self-abnegation.

Claire Luchette debut novel, "Agatha Of Little Neon," offers a counter narrative about a young 21st-century nun who's neither a holy fool nor a musical miracle worker nor a monster. I picked up "Agatha Of Little Neon" for its unusual subject. And I got pulled in by Agatha's voice. Sharp and, by turns, melancholy and wry, Agatha narrates her own belated coming-of-age tale about, as she says, learning how to distinguish an idea of yourself from the real thing. Agatha tells her story in retrospect, beginning in 2005 in her convent outside of Buffalo, N.Y. It's a place with walls painted the color of mayonnaise, ruled by a beloved, elderly mother superior frail as filament. Agatha has spent seven years there, ever since she took her vows at the age of 22. She and three fellow sisters - all the same age - run a day care center. But when the novel opens, the diocese is going broke because, as Agatha tactfully says, the men in charge had been reckless. Later on, when Agatha is all out of deference, she's more lacerating about the recklessness - sexual as well as monetary - of those priests who are in charge. Abruptly booted out of their convent, the four sisters are transferred to a halfway house in the depressed Rhode Island town of Woonsocket. There, without any training, they're expected to minister to recovering addicts and ex convicts.

Here's Agatha's first impression of her new posting. (Reading) Woonsocket, a tuckered-out town in northern Rhode Island, split down the middle by a river of waste. The sidewalks were littered with condoms and crushed empties. From Woonsocket, you could vomit into Massachusetts. From Massachusetts, kids came to buy liquor and fentanyl after 9. The halfway house is the color of Mountain Dew, a yellow-green discount paint that makes the house visible from three blocks away, hence the name "Little Neon." Agatha observes that usually, when people saw our habits, they ceased to see our faces. And most of the halfway house residents behave that way, barely interacting with the sisters. But one recovering addict named Tim Gary is different. Tim, who's lost half his jaw bone to cancer and got hooked on Dilaudid, recognizes a fellow lost soul in Agatha. And Agatha is further pulled away from her community when she's ordered to teach geometry at a nearby girls Catholic high school, an ordeal that should qualify her for sainthood. What's especially striking about Luchette's novel is that it affirms the age-old writing workshop wisdom of show, don't tell.

Despite the fact that our narrator lives a contemplative life, she doesn't devote a lot of space to ruminations. Instead, every short chapter here is structured as a precise vignette dramatizing different incidents in her and her fellow sisters' lives from the mundane to the harrowing. For instance, there's the poverty of regular meal times at little neon where cut-rate concoctions like chopped walnut tacos make appearances, and a scene where Agatha describes how her mother hemorrhaged to death after giving birth to a baby brother, and how, for a grieving Agatha, church was the only thing in her life that pulled her forward - until it doesn't. (Reading) You could learn to live without a part of yourself, Agatha tells us, (reading) I did. For years, I lived like this. And then I started to yearn for what I had lost. You don't have to be Catholic to connect with Luchette's nuanced and vivid story of a lonely young woman yearning for community and also yearning for everything she's had to give up to be part of that community. The nuns don't fly or sing or torment the helpless in "Agatha Of Little Neon," but they do make an indelible impression.

GROSS: Maureen Corrigan teaches literature at Georgetown University. She reviewed "Agatha Of Little Neon" by Claire Luchette. Tomorrow on FRESH AIR, we'll talk about the latest revelations about what Trump tried to do to subvert the results of the election. My guest will be Katie Benner, who covers the Justice Department for The New York Times. We'll also talk about the DOJ under Merrick Garland. I hope you'll join us.

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GROSS: FRESH AIR's executive producer is Danny Miller. Our technical director is Audrey Bentham. Our engineer today is Adam Staniszewski. Our interviews and reviews are produced and edited by Amy Salit, Phyllis Myers, Sam Briger, Lauren Krenzel, Heidi Saman, Therese Madden, Ann Marie Baldonado, Thea Chaloner, Seth Kelley and Kayla Lattimore. Our producer of digital media is Molly Seavey-Nesper. Roberta Shorrock directs the show. I'm Terry Gross.

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