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"'The hardest thing about it,' Michelle told her, 'is that people give you a choice about everything. "Do you want fries with your hamburger?" "Do you want the plain or the floral design on your checks?" I spent my whole life never having a choice, and now I have too many choices!'"
Whitney also describes the women stay: their energy, dedication and humour in the face of uncertainty. For all their boundless hope, their stories have a melancholy air. At least as Whitney describes it, many religious communities are merely treading water.
The Calling isn't as lyrical or profound as Virgin Time or The Cloister Walk, the classics that clearly inspired it. Whitney's Reader's Digest prose style can be cloying. Yet these sisters and their struggles are vividly evoked, without resorting to cheap voyerism. As a microcosm of Catholic life before and after the Second Vatican Council, The Calling succeeds admirably.
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