Surprised by Oxford

A Memoir

By: Carolyn Weber

Narrated by: Nancy Peterson

Length: 12 hrs and 8 mins

Publisher's summary

Surprised by Oxford is the memoir of a skeptical agnostic who comes to a dynamic personal faith in God during graduate studies in literature at Oxford University.  

Carolyn Weber arrives at Oxford a feminist from a loving but broken family, suspicious of men and intellectually hostile to all things religious. As she grapples with her God-shaped void alongside the friends, classmates, and professors she meets, she tackles big questions in search of truth, love, and a life that matters.  

From issues of fatherhood, feminism, doubt, doctrine, and love, Weber explores the intricacies of coming to faith with an aching honesty and insight echoing that of the poets and writers she studied. Rich with literary references, Surprised by Oxford is at once gritty and lyrical; both humorous and spiritually perceptive. This savvy, credible account of Christian conversion and its aftereffects follows the Oxford liturgical calendar as it entertains, informs, and promises to engage even the most skeptical and unlikely listener.

©2011 Carolyn Weber (P)2019 Tantor

Beautifully Written book

I love this book. This is the third time I have read it. There is a movie adaptation that just premiered this past weekend but does not have a wide release date yet.

Once I finished the movie I wanted to go back and reread the book again since it had been about six years since my last reading and I knew there had been changes to the story (as there must be when adapting a 450 page book to a 90 minute movie). So I wanted to reread to make sure my memory was correct as to what the changes were.

This is a book that is hard to adapt either to screen or audio because it has so many literary quotes and allusions and breaks. I thought that the audio was well done, but I also think that part of this is because I am familiar with the text. I didn't listen to it all because I was trying to hurry through the text. So I alternated between print and audio. I would not at all say this is a book that you shouldn't listen to (there are some that are awful to listen to.) The reading is done well. But this is a book I think I prefer reading because I prefer going slowly over it. I like rereading sections. And there is so much poetry here that often I want to read and reread several times before I move on.

This is a story with a joint theme of finding God and finding love with her now husband during the first year of school at Oxford. She continued on to finish a PhD at Oxford.

As I watched the movie and re-read the book, I thought that her dialogue sounds similar to John Green's fictional characters. Everyone is brilliant. There is real depth to the conversation and thought. This is her story of finding God, not a normative structure of how all people must find God.

But what I love most, is the beauty. Beauty in the written prose and in the presentation of what it means to find God and have faith in this world.

Beautiful book! Highly recommend

So eloquently written, this book tells a beautiful and raw story of how much life can change in just a year.

A lovely story about how our Amazing God pursues.

God is good. If you don't believe me just sit by and watch him work.

Another C.S. Lewis

Carolyn Weber has given a great gift to the 21st century in the category of spiritual memoir. Surprised by Oxford will give the listener many surprises but mostly an abiding sense in the relentless, loving pursuit of divine providence.

Oxford is dreamy, isn't it?

It is sort of a memoir, in the sense that I believe the author went to Oxford, and had more or less the experiences she describes there. But it reads more like a testimony or apologetic, or maybe a sort of modern, non-allegorical Pilgrim's Progress. As a reader with the same beliefs as the author, I'm not necessarily unhappy about that, but the story did feel a bit preachy at times. The title is, no doubt, a conscious allusion to C.S. Lewis's memoir Surprised by Joy: The Shape of My Early Life, which also includes an account of his conversion, so I guess readers shouldn't be (sorry) surprised. It's well-written and the narrator is very good.

Beautiful story!

Carolyn Weber weaves an amazing tale of her own journey to faith. Her storytelling is captivating, and I highly recommend this book!

Saw the movie, loved it, loved the book more

Saw the movie, loved it, loved the book more Beautifully written. Amazing indepth redemption story.

Very Enjoyable

I love autobiographies. This one was so good especially as it is a conversion story as well.

Amazing

So impressed by the quality of the writing and how this connects with both the mind and the heart.

Surprised by Surprised by Oxford

This is one of the most beautiful and challenging books I've listened to. I'm ever so thankful to have found such a helpful, entertaining, and inspiring story.

Definitely worth the read!

Excellently written book describing the quest for truth of an Oxford Postgrad student. I can’t comment in the American or Canadian accents but the British ones are not realistic. Overlooking that I highly recommend it to anyone with connections to Oxford, academia or Christianity.