Telling Secrets

In the third volume of his autobiography ( The Sacred Journey ; Now and Then ) Buechner speaks in a sensitive and quietly humorous voice as he describes crises in his life: the suicide of his father when the author was 10; the anorexia of his teenaged daughter. Details of other demanding situations, less critical, provoke merriment as well as thought. As a lecturer at a Unitarian Universalist divinity school, Buechner encountered atheistic students preparing for the ministry, along with a feminist who opposed studying King Lear because the drama features women in subservient roles. In a book that stands out as uncommonly rewarding and inspirational, the author convinces us that secrets kept buried can cause harm. (Feb.)