Rachel UrquhartRezensionen

Growing up in Rensselaer County in upstate New York, references to the Shakers were everywhere. I was fascinated by this culture that was so familiar, and yet entirely foreign. So I was thrilled to find this book, but unfortunately half-way through it became clear why I had found it with the bargain books. A real missed opportunity.½

Polly Kimball has had a rough life on the family farm. Her drunken father sexually molests her, beats and belittles her mother, and tried to drown her baby brother in a bucket, leaving him brain damaged. When she hears him mumbling about a plan to be rid of his family and sell off the farm, she knows that she has to do something to get them to safety. When her father rolls home in a drunken stupor and flops into bed, Polly hitches up the horse and cart, bundles he mother and brother into it, and goes into the house for one last look at the man who has tormented them all. Later she says that she wanted to see him asleep, vulnerable, weak, and that she dropped the oil lamp she was holding by accident when he turned towards her. The last thing she remembers seeing as they drove off is the house in flames and her father, afire, stumbling into the yards.

With no money and no other recourse, Polly's mother May decides it would be best to leave her two children in a nearby Shaker settlement, expecting that they will become members and stay there for life. When Polly gets caught up in antics of a Shaker meeting, many of the residents believe that she is a Visionist, sent by Mother Ann to give them words of wisdom. Many, especially her roommate Sister Charity, believe that her arrival is a blessing, but Elder Sister Agnes is less sure . . .

Meanwhile, several lawyers and businessmen and a fire inspector are looking for the Kimballs, hoping to buy or take by default the homestead and land that originally belonged to May's father.

I was initially drawn into this novel and hoped that it would provide insights into the Shaker community, but I really didn't learn much that I didn't already know. Polly's story is a sad one; she is a young girl who has had to learn how to survive. The wrangling over the Kimball property was not a direction that I expected the book to take, and I don't really think it was the best option. Urquhart tells the tale in sections alternating between three narrators: Polly, Sister Charity, and Simon, the fire inspector.½

" I really enjoyed Urquhart's view of the Shakers-not idealistic but also not entirely cynical"
read more: http://likeiamfeasting.blogspot.gr/2016/04/the-visionist-rachel-urquhart.html½

“The Visionist,” set in New England in the 1840’s, introduces readers to Shaker life. Abandoned as a baby, the strict life of a Shaker is the only life Sister Charity has ever known. Trying to please her spiritual leader “Mother Ann,” her benefactress Elder Sister Agnes, and the other members of the society leave Sister Charity feeling doomed to perdition because of her unworthiness.

Polly Kimball, her brother Ben, and mother May suffered for years under the brutal hands of her father Silas. When a fire Polly accidentally set helped them flee, May leaves them at a nearby Shaker community and disappears. In her sadness Polly has a vision, which the community believes comes from their beloved Mother Ann. Elder Sister Agnes is suspicious of Polly’s “vision” and wonders about her past, while Simon Pryor, fire inspector, has questions of his own.

As the girls’ friendship grows, the fear that Charity will find out everything about her is built on lies weighs heavily on Polly’s mind. Soon the struggle between right and wrong will consume both girls, as each attempt to figure out their role in the community.

Urquhart’s well researched portrayal of Shaker life in the 1840’s, as well as descriptions of clothing and customs of the time, does much to make “The Visionist” realistic. I would have preferred May telling her own story of how she got tangled up with Silas, and then explaining what she did to survive after dropping off Ben and Polly at the Shaker community. Since I only got dribs and drabs of her story, I gave it 3 stars instead of 4.

Recommended for Adults.

Blog review link: https://shouldireaditornot.wordpress.com/2016/04/10/the-visionist-rachel-urquhar...

The Visionist is set in the City of Hope, a Shaker community in Massachusetts in 1842. Fifteen-year old Polly and her brother are hidden in the City of Hope by their mother after a fire destroyed their farm and killed their father. While her brother Benjamin accepts their new situation, Polly struggles to adjust to the different way of life, inio part because of the secrets she carries with her. While being viewed with suspicion at first, she is soon hailed as a "visionist", which brings even more scrutiny and pressure to conform. However, Polly forms a friendship with the young sister Charity, who has never lived in the outside world.

The story is told from three perspectives, Polly's, Sister Charity's and Simon Pryor, an investigator and local fire inspector. What I really enjoyed about this book was that the author managed to give completely different and distinct voices to all three narrators. They were very real, very believable and added small bits of information in equal measure. The writing was beautiful, engaging and suspenseful. I couldn't wait to find out what would happen in the end. The ending itself didn't really move me - not that I have a better suggestion - but not everyone's motivation made sense for me and perhaps I thought it was all a bit to neat, otherwise I would have rated it higher. Still, it was a very enjoyable read and I'm looking forward to reading the author's next book.

This book could have been WONDERFUL. But, for me, I felt like I was reading a book that was trying so hard to tell a story without any bias toward Shakers and abusers that it left no room for any emotional connection to any of the characters. Every characters voice was the same. Their thoughts were described in the same manner, which is hard to believe would be true due to the fact that the three main narrators have drastically different lifestyles. The 'mystery' was totally predictable. I did, however, find the historical context of the shaker community fascinating. Oh, and 5 stars for the cover. I kind of want to use it as a coffee table book, it is so pretty!

This book could have been WONDERFUL. But, for me, I felt like I was reading a book that was trying so hard to tell a story without any bias toward Shakers and abusers that it left no room for any emotional connection to any of the characters. Every characters voice was the same. Their thoughts were described in the same manner, which is hard to believe would be true due to the fact that the three main narrators have drastically different lifestyles. The 'mystery' was totally predictable. I did, however, find the historical context of the shaker community fascinating. Oh, and 5 stars for the cover. I kind of want to use it as a coffee table book, it is so pretty!

Overall a well told tale of life set among the Shakers, as researched and imagined by the author. It is not hard to imagine a community taking in orphans who had been abused and finding what appeared to be spiritual truth in the coping mechanisms (disassociation and hallucinations) one of the children had developed in response to that abuse. The descriptions of the young women who were "visionists" reminded me more than a bit of that of the nuns in "The Devils of Loudon" by Huxley, which describes young nuns in a Convent falling into a similar group hysteria. Where the book fell short for me was in its descriptions of the faith and Community life among the Shakers. I am fortunate enough to know the Shaker Community at Sabbathday Lake in Maine, and have read extensively of the Shaker faith, its history and its present manisfestations. What seems missing to me in this book is the deep sense of love and commitment, equality of the sexes and before God in the living Community which does not come across to me in this story. I had the feeling that the author, by reading past accounts only, focused too much on the shallower aspects of exclusion,song and dance and missed the deeply spiritual heart of that movement which might have better been portrayed if she had more respect for the positive aspects of the Shaker faith. The characters in the world, as Shakers call those outside the Community, are well drawn, as is the visionist Polly and her roommate and mentor Sister Charity. The oher Shakers seem more caricatures than people, however, and the story of Polly's mother seems left incomplete.½

In The Visionist: A Novel, Polly Kimball, her brother Ben and her mother are running for their lives. After her drunken father passed out on his bed, Polly accidentally dropped an oil lamp in his room and set the entire house on fire. As the three ride off in their wagon she looks back to see her father running out of the house. She knows, without a doubt, his punishment, if he catches them, will be far greater than any he has previously inflicted. Still, her mother has a plan and when they arrive at City of Hope, a Shaker community, she is relieved that they will be taken in and sheltered. Her mother refuses to stay, saying she has business to take care of, so she signs over Polly and Ben, indenturing them into the Shaker community. This means they are bound to the faith until they are eighteen, when they will have the choice to stay or go.

Ostensibly, The Visionist seems to be about assimilation into a religious culture and life within that culture. Urquhart uses Polly and Ben to show us the unique particulars of Shaker life, beginning with the fact that they are no longer allowed to acknowledge each other as brother and sister. Earthly familial ties are not recognized by Shakers and are believed to stand in the way of redemption. All are one and the same, with the exception of the Visionists—young girls in other Shaker communities who have been so overcome by the Spirit that they dance, speak in tongues, write or create drawings, all about the heaven that awaits. City of Hope has not been blessed with such a girl but their Eldress, Elder Sister Agnes, has witnessed the phenomenon. It is strange and startling then when their newest member, Polly, begins to sway and speak in an unknown tongue while claiming she can see angels. With this vision she goes from outsider to exalted newcomer.

One of Polly’s greatest adherents is her mentor and roommate, Sister Charity, who has lived in the community since being abandoned by her mother at birth. She sees Polly as both a gift and a test:

I, on the other hand, have felt neither spiritual nor material hardship in my life, and so I count it as my work to accept and forgive. I see that every day, we give and work and worship, humbling ourselves through deep and heartfelt bows before the eternal spirits we encounter in Meeting.

As the novel progresses more questions are raised about Polly, about their life before City of Hope and on a much deeper level on faith and belief. Through Urquhart’s thoughtful prose the reader is able to see what some of the characters cannot. Sister Charity is written in the first person and so her perception of Polly’s visions comes from the singular nature of her experience. To her, Polly’s visions divine inspiration but is it merely Polly’s mode of survival? Yes, she sees and hears angels but as a coping mechanism to shield herself on the many nights when her father was raping her. In her mind, the fact that she “allowed” this to happen means she will never be anything but unclean and unworthy so her answers to the elders who test her ring very true in their humility and self-abasement—making her more of a blessed being in their eyes. Are Polly’s visions any less real because they were caused by her mind’s intense desire to escape than those reached in religious fervor?

Urquhart balances these intense spiritual questions with the increasing tension in the outer world. Despite her family’s appearance of abject poverty it comes to light that the land on which their desolate farm stood is very valuable. Simon Pryor is a county inspector assigned by a wealthy resident to investigate the fire. With his own past hanging over his head Simon must pursue this case as far as he can and so goes in search of Polly’s mother. The trail takes him to City of Hope and his presence brings the past into the community and back to Polly. In this way, Urquhart uses a multi-layered plot to tie together the secular and the religious and to explore the overlapping nature of good and evil, greed, religious fervor and belief. The complexity of these layers and the questions that arise: What is important? What is not? What is real? What is imagined? are enough to give the reader a spinning feeling, much like the one invoked by Shakers at their Meetings. Thankfully, Urquhart’s steady, quiet prose provides the ballast needed to keep the story grounded. This is not a treatise or religious history of the Shakers, although Urquhart does a marvelous job bringing this insulated and dying religion to life. Ultimately, The Visionist is the story of a group of people, each with their own fears, beliefs, and motivations and what they do to protect those they love and their secrets.

Review first published on my blog: http://memoriesfrombooks.blogspot.com/2013/12/the-visionist.html

Polly Kimball is a fifteen year old growing up in the 1800s in Massachusetts. She lives on a farm with her mother, her younger brother, and her abusive father. They barely scrape by, and Polly lives in constant fear of and constant anger against her father. One day, things come to a head, and Polly sets fire to the family farm, killing her father. She escapes with her mother and brother.

It is then that the mother May seems to awaken from years of abuse. She brings Polly and her brother to a Shaker community and leaves them there for she thinks that they will be cared for in way that she is unable to. The community is one of strict rules and very certain ways.

This, however, is also a time in which certain Shaker communities have received mystical visions. Polly seems to be blessed with these visions at the City of Hope, and as such, gains prominence in the community. She has told no one of her past and struggles with that secret. Sister Charity, an orphan raised in the community since infancy, becomes Polly's friend. Polly's story becomes one you read often - abuse and its terrible consequences.

Around Polly's story are other stories. Charity faces her own struggles to surrender to the rules of the community and to not let emotions get in the way of her service and her obedience to the rules. Simon Pryor is the man investigating the fire at the Kimball farm, but has his own history. I don't see how the details of his story truly contribute to the book. I would rather have known more about the other characters.

The one story that I feel is missing from the book is May's story. She is perhaps the most interesting character in the book, but not developed at all. Here is a young woman who falls into a bad marriage. She puts up with abuse for years and allows her children to be abused. Once she escapes, she also becomes the force to attempt to save her children. I wish the author had explored her story more.

An interesting tale, but one that explores certain story lines too much and leaves other more interesting ones undeveloped.

*** Reviewed for the GoodReads First Reads program ***