{"id":6951,"date":"2026-08-03T10:08:26","date_gmt":"2026-08-03T10:08:26","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/?p=6951"},"modified":"2026-08-03T10:08:26","modified_gmt":"2026-08-03T10:08:26","slug":"book-of-hours-by-ellen-oconnell-whittet","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/?p=6951","title":{"rendered":"Book of Hours by Ellen O\u2019Connell Whittet"},"content":{"rendered":"

A sometimes raw, always luminous exploration of motherhood, martyrdom, and women\u2019s untold stories\u00a0 \u00a0<\/strong><\/h3>\n

By the time the unnamed protagonist of Book of Hours<\/em> goes into labor, the reader has followed her through more than 100 pages of distinctly female bodily unease, from an adolescent eating disorder to adult fertility struggles sharpened by the dehumanizing realities of the modern medical industry. Thirty more pages are devoted to her experience of giving birth, in all its harrowing detail. As the novel observes, these are the kinds of stories that have traditionally gone unspoken, and it is a testament to the deftness of author Ellen O\u2019Connell Whittet\u2019s prose that Book of Hours<\/em> never feels like overcorrection. The novel is as much about joy as it is sorrow, but it is especially about joy and sorrow shading into one another in ways that make for both uncomfortable and incisive reading.<\/p>\n

The novel\u2019s protagonist, referred to simply as \u201cthe woman\u201d (or, later, \u201cthe mother\u201d), is a thirty-something French teacher living in California with her husband, Ted. A lapsed but nostalgic Catholic, the woman has had visions of saints since she was a child and dreams of one day translating into English Le Roman du Mont-Saint-Michel<\/em>\u2014in particular, its account of a pilgrim to the abbey who, having gone into labor on the road back to the mainland, found herself miraculously shielded from the rising tide. The story fascinates the woman on multiple levels but speaks most poignantly to her longstanding desire to become a mother, and to the pain that that desire causes her even as she conceives and gives birth.<\/p>\n

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Whittet\u2019s willingness to linger in that pain\u2014to feel out its contours without fully resolving or explaining them\u2014is what gives the novel its deep emotional power. Yes, much of what the woman goes through reflects the struggle to come to terms with her physicality in a society that surveils the female body. And yes, this struggle is nothing new: The woman\u2019s eating disorder develops at the intersection of a boyfriend\u2019s unwanted sexual advances and her exposure to the many female saints who fasted to the point of starvation. Even here, however, there is a tension between erasure and empowerment that the novel recognizes: \u201cThey learned holy women took up less, not more space\u2014that their inner yearning was big enough to swallow their frail bodies. This was key to not being seen, and therefore not being subjugated.\u201d <\/em><\/strong>This tension reaches its fullest and most complex expression in Whittet\u2019s depiction of motherhood. There is a moment when, looking at her newborn daughter, the woman has the piercing realization that her child will one day die; the association of motherhood with sacrifice and suffering is not merely the result of societal conditioning, Book of Hours<\/em> suggests.<\/p>\n

If the novel\u2019s comfort with ambivalence is its greatest strength, its missteps mostly reflect the urge to over-explicate: A conversation with a priest who credits his prayers with the baby\u2019s safe delivery is a bit on the nose, and the resolution to a subplot involving the woman\u2019s brother, who died in infancy, is perhaps too tidy. These moments are rare, however, and are vastly outweighed by the cut-glass quality of Whittet\u2019s writing elsewhere: sharp but delicate. The woman\u2019s characterization is similarly subtle. She functions as the everywoman her anonymity implies, but with enough mismatched edges to render her distinct as an individual; her snarky texts with her sister, Nora, jar plausibly with her generally unassuming demeanor. Easy to relate to but still very much her own person, she is a perfect vehicle for a novel that centers on an experience as common and yet particular as motherhood itself.<\/p>\n

The post Book of Hours by Ellen O\u2019Connell Whittet<\/a> appeared first on Independent Book Review<\/a>.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A sometimes raw, always luminous exploration of motherhood, martyrdom, and women\u2019s untold stories\u00a0 \u00a0 By the time the unnamed protagonist of Book of Hours goes into labor, the reader has followed her through more than 100 pages of distinctly female bodily unease, from an adolescent eating disorder to adult fertility struggles sharpened by the dehumanizing […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":0,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6951","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-bookreviews"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6951"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=6951"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6951\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=6951"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=6951"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/bookloves.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=6951"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}