"A young man’s struggle for individual maturity unfolds with an extraordinary and deeply affecting truthfulness. Reason, intellect, and a large humanity gradually engage with the ancient tenets of imposed faith. John Hall’s story of irresistible self-realization is beautifully rendered, quite original, and unforgettable."—Shirley Hazzard, author of The Transit of Venus and The Great Fire 

"A riveting memoir about a young man’s trajectory through Christian faith to the Roman Catholic priesthood and out the other side. N. John Hall’s intimate and illuminating revelations of his experiences in the seminary, and of the all-absorbing gratifications and frustrations of ‘the system’ in the 1950s and 60s, are unique in our day. Not to be missed."—Victoria Glendinning, award-winning biographer of Trollope, Vita Sackville-West, and Leonard Woolf

"Belief is both an absorbing personal story and a vivid evocation of an American Catholicism which has almost entirely disappeared. It was triumphalist, patriarchal, anti-intellectual, and obsessed with sexual sin—and sometimes one doesn’t know whether to laugh or weep at John Hall’s account of what was taught in seminaries in the days before Vatican II. But that Catholic subculture also had its caring, supportive, and binding aspects, as Hall acknowledges, while explaining why he left both the priesthood and the Church eventually. Many Catholic men of his generation made the same journey; few have told their story so honestly or in such sharply-focused detail."—David Lodge, author of Small World and Nice Work

"Hall is a master of a sweet and insinuating prose that works beneath the skin and directs our intelligence and our passions in ways we are never fully aware of. He not only records but offers generously an uninsistent pattern of a modern heroism, an intellectual and spiritual (or, for some, anti-spiritual) journey marked by ironic self-reflection, great humor, and moving pathos. Working in ways altogether different, it is nonetheless a Joycean ‘portrait’ for our time."—James R. Kincaid, author of Annoying the Victorians

Also see interview of N. John Hall by Nancy Zaroulis at bookzillion.com