The Seven Storey Mountain
Recommended. Age: 18+. A Catholic review of this book for parents.
Our review
Thomas Merton was a young man who did not believe in God and lived a wild life. Little by little, God drew him to the Catholic Church. He became a Catholic and later gave up everything to become a monk who prays all day. This is one of the great Catholic conversion stories of the last century. Fulton Sheen compared it to St. Augustine's Confessions, and it filled monasteries in the 1950s. It is for adults. The age shown is adults, set by our independent reading age of 18, since no Common Sense Media or publisher age exists.
For parents
For adults. A serious older teen can read parts of it with a parent from about sixteen. Independent reading from eighteen, which sets the age we show. Know before you hand it over: Merton describes a wasted youth, and he fathered a child at Cambridge, though his censors cut the franker passages. It is long and full of his opinions. Merton himself later said he would write it differently. Ask: what kept pulling Merton toward God when he ran from Him? What did he have to give up? How is his story like St. Augustine's? Is God calling me to something, even something hard?