Somewhere between heaven and earth

Karnezis convincingly creates a long gone world where characters listen to music on gramophones, and travel by horse-drawn cart and Model T Ford. Then as now, some are suspicious of new technology; mother superior has “ambivalent feelings towards the typewriter, which she suspected was invented to make lying easier,’’ and innovators are compared to the builders of Babel.

At the convent, “a place neither on earth nor in heaven but at the exact midpoint between the two,’’ the nuns walk the grounds, conversing about “the creation of the world, how many nails were used to crucify Christ and other important doctrinal matters in between brief rests in the shade to admire the beauty of nature.’’

Humor breaks the heaviness. When the mother superior asks the superioress general about her health, the older woman answers that her doctors “no longer care. I am now under the jurisdiction of a funeral director.’’ And when a nun refuses a marriage proposal because she’s married to God, her suitor says, “Oh, divorce the old codger then.’’

But beneath the quaintness of convent life is Karnezis’s exploration of the darkness and suffering that result from these characters’ beliefs coupled with the historical moment. The women aren’t at the convent for their love of God, but because they don’t have better options. Mother superior believes the best she can hope for after death is purgatory, while the bishop can’t sleep without strong pills.