I grew up not caring about saints and thought they were just historical figures for Christians to use as substitutes for pagan deities. However, after leaving the Jehovah's Witnesses cult, I began to entertain the idea that there might be sound reasons for the reverence of saints that I just didn’t know about. In 2023, an opportunity to explore that curiosity presented itself when I discovered the book In Praise of Disobedience: Clare of Assisi by Dacia Maraini on NetGalley.

I felt hesitant when I picked up the book because the world of saints seemed so foreign to me. I'm not sure if I'm in that phase of faith deconstruction-reconstruction where I am fully open to these kinds of stories about faith and religion that center on figures who, even for believers, can be somewhat eccentric. Luckily, Dacia's approach to this book is refreshing. It's my first time reading an epistolary novel that is a hybrid of a fictional world where these characters exist and revolves around academic essays investigating someone's life in the context of their time and its sociopolitical atmosphere. Because of this, contrary to my expectations, I enjoyed all the aspects of the book. The conversations between the author and Chiara can sometimes feel too strange and uninteresting, but I think they complement the non-fiction areas of the book that highlight how unusual St. Claire's life events are. In a way, they reveal that certain people's oddities can prompt us to question our beliefs about the world. These individuals stand out and amaze us because they offer us a window to see life outside the conventions of society. I must admit, though, that a significant portion of the book feels very academic, and I agree with those who argue that labeling this book as a novel is misleading. Regardless, for someone like me, whose interest in fiction is waning and who is becoming more comfortable with non-fiction, the book is definitely my cup of tea.

When the unnamed writer began to get lost in St. Claire's world and dove deep into convent life, the misogyny of the Church, and the mysteries of the saint's faith, I was also moved to examine my inner thoughts and contemplate the big questions that the saint's life unexpectedly touched upon. Little by little, as the book progressed, I was drawn into the lives of St. Claire and other saints, and I eventually discovered that these individuals are venerated for very meaningful reasons, one of which is that their actions are revolutionary. Their expressions of faith are largely acts of resistance against authority, empires, and oppression. I don't want to discuss in this review how Claire's life can serve as a framework for Christian anarchists or, from another perspective, as an example of how Christ's teachings can be applied in anti-imperialist ways, because both are up for debate. However, the book provides evidence and stories showing how St. Claire challenged the conventions of her time. That said, the analysis of these recorded stories exposes a flaw in the book: it is convoluted with too many theses. But I’d argue that the author isn’t really aiming for a specific target; they just want to tag readers in examining all these interconnected issues and concerns.

I didn't expect this book to affect me to this degree, but the eccentricities of Clare of Assisi presented in this book have changed how I view saints in general and left me with the impression that faith in the divine is always more than just a personal affair. With this in mind, I hope more people check out the stories of women of faith, no matter their religion, because these stories often get overlooked in communities and churches where men are mostly in charge and decide which stories get the spotlight. By reading and retelling their stories, we can end the silence, amplify their voices, and prove that their sacrifices are not made in vain.

I understand how one might find this to be a bit dull, but I had a good time with it; as someone with a personal interest in St. Clare of Assisi and a liking for anything epistolary.

In Praise of Disobedience
Clare of Assisi, A Novel
by Dacia Maraini
Pub Date 13 Jan 2023
Rutgers University Press
Christian| Historical Fiction| Literary Fiction



I am reviewing a copy of In Praise of Disobedience through Rutgers University Press and Netgalley:

⭐️ ⭐️ ⭐️

I really wanted to like this book, but less than a quarter of the way in I had trouble following it. The concept was good, the execution not so much:



In a mysterious e-mail, an author is asked to tell the story of Clare of Assisi, an Italian saint from the thirteenth century.



After being annoyed by the request, the author begins researching Saint Clare and is captivated by her story. In the pages of the book we are also transported into the strange and beautiful world of medieval Italy, where we are witness to the daily rituals of life in a convent.


As the center of that life, Saint Clare stands out for her contradictions: physically disabled woman who travels widely in her imagination, someone who is unforgivingly harsh with herself yet infinitely generous with the women she supervises, someone who abnegates herself, but still knows she is valuable. A visionary who liberated herself from the chains of materialism and patriarchy. As a visionary who broke free from materialism and patriarchy, Saint Clare is an inspiration for a new generation.


The concept was good, but the narrative execution was poor, so I gave In Praise of Disobedience three stars.

Happy Reading!

I really wanted to love this novel because it is about a saint. However, I found the plot to be a bit boring and repetitive. Still, St. Clare was a fascinating figure that deserves more attention. This, this book has a great premise but was not executed well.

Unfortunately this was a DNF for me at about 50%. I truly wanted to like it - I loved the concept! I just didn't find myself reaching for it all and had to force myself to keep plodding through it. The parts about St Clare were interesting, but it an easier and more interesting read as a biography of St Clare without the epistolatory aspect. The interaction between Chiara and the author felt forced and unrealistic to me.

This book is hard to rate or recommend because it doesn't quite know what it wants to be. It calls itself "a novel," but there isn't a narrative other than the emails exchanged between Chiara and the main character; and it is even a stretch to consider that frame to be a narrative. The dialogue is unrealistic and holds no pretense that it is native - the "emails" are inorganic, awkward, and obviously translated. When the main character writes about Clare, it is rambling and unorganized. I honestly wouldn't have finished the book if I didn't personally find St. Clare to be an incredibly interesting personality.

So, if it is not a novel, is it a nonfiction text? No, definitely not. These characters and their conversations are manufactured, and even the description of Clare's life and believes is tainted by the main character's personal insights. There is a list of sources in the end, but no in-text citations.

While I enjoyed some of the bits about St. Clare, it was nothing new to me. I wouldn't even recommend this text to someone who wanted to learn more about St. Clare because of the lack of primary material or citations. I can't imagine who the audience is for this book other than those who want to read Dacia Mariani's entire bibliography, or those who want to read absolutely every text written about St. Clare.

A tremendous amount of research went into this fictional telling. I was disappointed to have the exchange of letters between the young girl and the writer go away for part of the book. It was adding something to the story.

The author uncovered so much material worthy of consideration. Why did these women go to convents? Why the emphasis on poverty? They could have done so much more! This would be a great book club read. I appreciated that it read as fiction.

Dacia Maraini’s In Praise of Disobedience (2013) is a novel concerned with silence, dreams, and meaning-making outside of time. The novel is woven together by three women: Chiara, a young Sicilian hoping to understand herself vis-a-vis the saint from whom she took her name, the unnamed writer she appeals to for narrative assistance in this venture, and their shared subject, Saint Clare of Assisi. Through letters and diary entries, readers are immersed in the writer’s process of enlivening Saint Clare through research and bold stretches of imagination.

In the midst of one query, the writer says this: “Enough of these irreverent thoughts. No one has ever posed these problems with respect to a saint. Yet such issues were real, the stuff of daily life, and they had nothing to do with prayer and meditation.” The narrative unfolds in dialogue with scholarly and classical texts, including Clare’s own letters and poetry. The writer dreams, again and again, about Clare. In attempting to get closer to her subject, there is no suggestion that one type of attention—scholarly or psychic—is more valuable than the other. She fervently wishes for Clare to answer for herself as a woman, above all else. Why did she choose the convent? Why insist on inflicting so much pain upon one’s own body? Behind her nominal desire to experience martyrdom in Morocco, didn’t there linger a more decipherable desire for novelty? She wants Clare, with her calloused feet and sickly body, to bleed beyond the outlines of her canonical portrait. After all, “What virtue is there in being born already perfect and holy?”

There’s this recurring image: nuns’ writings locked away in rotting convent drawers—an entire classical tradition lost. The writer fantasizes about the day when women’s mystical writings will be prized alongside those unquestioned classics written by men. Indeed, Maraini succeeds in prodding us toward a reassessment of “women’s literature” through her unconventional narrative structure and energetic encounter with a wide range of sources (Aristotle, Pinocchio). I sensed deep generosity in Maraini’s recurrent deference to the witnesses to Saint Clare’s canonization, nuns who lived with her at San Damiano. Muddled by time and constrained by the task at hand (the pressing question of Clare’s happiness, for instance, would have hardly been relevant), the women were imperfect narrators and yet, all the same, storytellers engaged in worthwhile literary projects of their own.

Very interesting book in content, flowing from a narrative point of view. The author studies the character of Santa Chiara in a contemporary key drawing information from medieval texts. The attempt to explain to the contemporary reader the concept of "freedom" in the context of the choice of deprivation and mortification in the dark times of the Middle Ages is noteworthy. Compelling

But a very interesting book how they wrote this book how they talked about The C LAR E Oh ASS IS. This one came from a lot of money in the middle ages. The way they wrote this book was very interesting they would talk about present day when the author would talk about it and then And then switch over to her life. She was very very independent and she did not want to marry so she went into the nunnery. This was really interesting about the Catholic churches at that time. I like the history behind that and how it all tied in together. Alice woman would perform miracles to help people. She loved children and she would Hope them out. She also liked to wash people's feet Because they were not allowed to wear shoes in the numery. She also warm a hair shirt which is very painful. She seemed to be very happy because she Do not have to have the strength of being married with children. The numbering let them have some kind of freedom to be who they are. It was very interesting how they were not allowed to talk and t And the Bells would recollect their what they had to do during the day. The title Title says i At all because it was disobedience Cause they do not have to live in The male Dominance in middle ages. They could be who they wanted to be on the free Thinkers.

IN PRAISE OF DISOBEDIENCE is a deep personal meditation on the life of St. Clare of Assisi, disguised as an epistolary novel, a correspondence between the “Author” and a mysterious young woman keeps urging the Author to write about St Clare. This fictional frame for the story allows the author, in the guise of the “Author”—to free St. Clare’s story from its hagiographical baggage, and to meditate on the life and faith of Saint Clare with fresh eyes. It’s quite an extraordinary journey. There are many liturgical and literary references throughout and these thrilled me. the Author/author interweaves apocryphal stories from the lives of the saints, meditations on myths from other traditions, contemporaneous accounts of Clare as a historical figure, and autobiographical anecdotes from her own life…and the effect is really quite extraordinary. Never ponderous, almost playful in its reassessment of women’s lives and choices, and sometimes soaring effortlessly into the metaphysical, this novel is a one of a kind read that made me grateful to be literate.

I gave a 4* review for this novel for the amount of knowledge conveyed woven within the story. I have found fascinating to learn about Clare, her way of living and being. However we don't really know why she has become such an extreme personality.The author's main aim is to speculate about the reasons which pushed Clare to evolve the way she did. Even though I know that going to a convent was one of the only choices a woman was able and allowed to do, I am not sure that this feeling of feminism led to such extremes. For me the author focused too much on the topic of feminism. I felt that more emphasis on psychological aspects could have led to other interpretations, maybe closer to the truth?
The writing style is epistolary at the beginning and conclusion. The more developed part of the novel reads more as a biography than a novel which is definitely not wrong. However, the two characters writing to each other did not appear credible to me and I have found them irrelevant to what I wanted to read about.
I received a complimentary ARC of this novel from NetGalley and I am leaving voluntarily an honest review.