Karen Liebreich

As an Irish Catholic I was vastly curious to read this and learn about Liebrech’s take on what has happened in the church. She was able to discover from YEARS of research which group of priests more than likely could be considered responsible for the downfall by immoral sexual conduct of the Church. These men were given the duty and trust to educate future generations and they betrayed their calling and the innocence of an untold number of children but what is worse is knowing this scandal is not something that just hit the church from a few decades of looking the other way but it is allegedly been an issue for centuries.
Liebreich thankfully offers an extremely logical, well-thought out look at this group from their rise, through its history, growth and spread across the world. By examining how they grew she was able to discover a fundamental flaw in that not everyone that can teach should particularly when they only get the position via misconduct of other church members. Unfortunately she is able to show the church is not immune to greed and that old adage “money talks” which allowed those with wealthy connections essentially sanctioned access to a never ending group of innocents from which to choose.
In the Catholic Church the practice of bestowing ‘sainthood’ is well known as is the idea that these saints are assigned jobs for a lack of better word. Some are the patron saints of countries, places or ideas to whom we are given have a more unique access or insight to God to help with particular areas. It is without a doubt heartbreaking to learn that the man who is the patron saint of Catholic schools, a man who should take his job most seriously and be of the purest heart, was a man with intimate knowledge of the severe trauma students at these schools were suffering to which he did nothing about.
The average reader may have difficulty with this book though, not because of the material which we all have unfortunately become accustomed to, but the way in which it was written as it seems to be intended for a historian than the layman.

Although the subtitle leads one to believe that art and science will play a significant part of this book which was another reason I chose to read it, the arts and sciences are hardly mentioned, more as an afterthought. I felt the subtitle was quite misleading but to the publisher’s credit including it will probably get more sales until the word is out that the book actually does not include much.
All in all, misleading subtitle aside, I felt the author did a great job bringing together verifiable facts about a heart wrenching part of the Church’s history.

Thank you to Netgalley and Endeavor Press for allowing me to review this book.… (mehr)

This book is the story of an obsession taken to its extreme and is both extremely silly and very sad, but in the end... prosaic.

A bottle washed up on the shore containing a lock of hair and a beautifully-written moving letter from a bereaved mother on the tragedy of her lost son. The author who found the bottle, becomes obsessed with it and consults everyone from the bottle manufacturers to tarot card readers and people who analyse hair strands to find out who the writer of the letter is. When she feels she has reached the end of the trail and the letter-writer will remain a mystery for ever she publishes this book writing of her research and of her conclusions as to who the letter-writer was - a portrait of a grieving mother.

There endeth the first edition of the book (which I did not read).

The book was published in English and some years later was translated into French and published in France where the bereaved mother read the book and recognised herself. So seven years after finding the bottle, the author meets the letter-writer and the mystery of who she is and how her son died are cleared up. The second edition of the book incorporating this new information, this more satisfactory ending, was then published and is the edition I read.

The author, her hair-strand reader and all the rest were completely wrong. There was no strange and romantic back-story of infatuation, the lonely woman fixating on her dead child, no sexualising their relationship, no drownings, suicides or anything else. No, she was a happily-married woman whose child had been killed in a car accident. Just as much a tragedy, but a prosaic one, not a doomed romantic one at all.

One is left with the impression that the author had too much time on her hands, too much money to throw at silly projects and a great desire to be published and possibly famous.

It isn't a bad book, but the wild goose chases are silly even as you read them and the ending merely confirms that.
… (mehr)

After reading this book I was left with a feeling of incompleteness. This book is a description of the search for the identity of a woman who wrote down her deepest feelings regarding the untimely death of her son. A quest, nothing more, nothing less.
The search itself, despair, glimpses of hope, walls that Liebreich ran into is written well, the book just didn't catch me as I thought it would.
Wondering if Liebreich managed to let go, to see the quest as finished and finally let the bottle drift the oceans again? Or did she start over again, hoping that there's still one tiny little clue that she had overseen at first...
Just curious: did the author of the letter (ever) come forward?… (mehr)