Review: Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis

Psyche Revived by Cupid's Kiss, Antonio Canova

Reviewed by Christina

Published: 1956

It's about: Till We Have Faces is the myth of Cupid and Psyche, retold from the point of view of Psyche's oldest sister, Orual.

I thought: I loved it. After reading 200 or so agonizing pages of Modelland, switching to C.S. Lewis' traditional, eloquent storytelling was a huge relief. I could go on and on about his graceful, subtly witty prose, but chances are you're already familiar with it.

The narrator/protagonist, Orual, is a strong, complex character- a warrior queen who defies and despises the unjust gods who rule her world. She adores Psyche and tries to save her from the unseen monster to whom Psyche has been wed/sacrificed, but human understanding falls short and Orual and Psyche are both subject to the wrath of the gods. The story is dark, much darker than any of this author's better-known books. If there's an explicit moral, I couldn't find it. Unlike the famous Narnia series, Lewis wrote Till We Have Faces to stand independently from theology; the myth haunted C.S. Lewis from his pre-Christian days onward, and he considered Till We Have Faces his most mature work. There are definitely theological and philosophical musings in this book, but no clear answers.

If you've read this, I'd love to hear your thoughts. As I read I kept looking for some obvious metaphor or message, since the other Lewises I've read were Narnia and The Screwtape Letters (both pretty moralistic pieces of fiction). Honestly, Till We Have Faces is miles ahead of those more famous works in terms of thematic subtlety and complexity. The recurring ideas that I noticed all seem to be opposites: beauty/ugliness, humanity/divinity, the nature of love (especially the struggle between love and doubt), and truth/myth.

Verdict: Stick it on the shelf! I'm dying to read this again with a book club. There's lots of potential for intelligent discussion.

Reading Recommendations: If you think you don't like C.S. Lewis, check this one out. If you think you're a big fan of C.S. Lewis, there's still a good chance you haven't read Till We Have Faces. Read it! And then talk to me about it!

Warnings: None. Well, I guess there's some sex-related stuff, but nothing worse than what you learned in your 8th-grade Greek Mythology unit.

Favorite excerpts: "I did not weep nor wring my hands. I was like water put into a bottle and left in a cellar: utterly motionless, never to be drunk, poured out, spilled or shaken. The days were endless. The very shadows seemed nailed to the ground as if the sun no longer moved."

“The complaint was the answer. To have heard myself making it was to be answered. Lightly men talk of saying what they mean. Often when he was teaching me to write in Greek the Fox would say, 'Child, to say the very thing you really mean, the whole of it, nothing more or less or other than what you really mean; that's the whole art and joy of words.'

A glib saying. When the time comes to you at which you will be forced at last to utter the speech which has lain at the center of your soul for years which you have, all that time, idiot-like, been saying over and over, you'll not talk about the joy of words. I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?”

What I'm reading next: Russian Winter by Daphne Kalotay

Review: Ramayana by Valmiki

Reviewed by Ingrid

Published: My edition, "retold" by William Buck, was published in 1976

It's about:

... Remember this?

Yep, this is that. The Ramayana is an Indian epic tale with a rich oral tradition that goes back thousands of years. There are many different versions of Rama's story, but the very basic plot is this: King Dasaratha's favorite son, Rama, is exiled to the forest by his stepmother. Rama's wife Sita is kidnapped by the demon king Ravana and kept captive on the island of Lanka. Rama, along with his half brother Lakshmana, the monkey Hanuman, and an army of animals fight to bring Sita back.

William Buck said of his work, "My method in writing [the Ramayana] was to begin with a literal translation from which to extract the story, and then to tell that story in an interesting way that would preserve the spirit and flavor of the original." Buck worked with multiple versions of the original text and fused them. The result is a fast moving and compelling narrative specifically aimed to Western audiences.

I thought: I found Buck's retelling to be very accessible and interesting. The story was very unfamiliar and had a very exotic feel to me, which I liked. This story is very different than traditional epics from the Western literary tradition. Characters are fantastical and exaggerated. The idea of dharma is the "wheel" around which the story turns, a concept rather foreign to Western readers (or me, at least ....) and thus intriguing.

Verdict: On the shelf.

Rama and Sita (via)

Reading Recommendations: If you are interested in Indian culture, this is required reading. If you want to read a hugely influential literary work that you might not be familiar with, this is a great one.

Warnings: Watch out, on page 361 there is a HUGE drawing of a snail. If you are deathly afraid of snails like me, you might want to skip that page.

Favorite excerpts:

Past stumps and trunks Lakshmana led them on into that hair-raising wilderness, and Dandaka grew deeper and denser and filled with noisy chiming crickets, and vultures sat on bare branches. Then at noon they say the eighty-four thousand little Valakhilya saints of the wood. They were people smaller than a thumbnail, floating in the air, drinking in sunbeams, looking like motes of dust in the Sun. They spoke to Rama and said, "Oh child, we are meek and unassuming. Here it is dreadful and lonely. It is a sadness to live here. Rakshasas prowl for flesh by night. They overshadow the darkness as though they would crush the mountains down. We must endure demons and submit to them. We have seen mountains of bones from the victims they have slaughtered, white bones, Rama, white bones . . . .

Review: Anansi Boys, by Neil Gaiman

Reviewed by Christina

Published: 2005

It's about: Our protagonist, Fat Charlie Nancy, is an unambitious, painfully shy Englishman of American origin. When his estranged father dies unexpectedly, Fat Charlie travels to his childhood hometown in Florida to attend the funeral. Here Fat Charlie learns from an old family friend that he has a brother. He is told that if he wishes to meet his brother, he need only mention it to a spider. Back in London, Fat Charlie drunkenly tells a spider he'd like to meet his brother. The next day, said brother (a handsome and charismatic man named Spider) shows up and starts mucking about in Fat Charlie's life. Adventures ensue.

[Note: Anansi Boys is a spin-off of an earlier Neil Gaiman novel called American Gods, but it's not a sequel or a prequel or anything. I mean, there would be no reason to read one book before the other.]

I thought: I suppose I'm going to have to stop saying that I don't read Fantasy, because this is the third book I've read by Neil Gaiman and I'm not sorry to admit it. But Gaiman is so far removed from what I consider traditional Fantasy (dragons and faire maidens and... well, LotR) that I think he deserves a different category. His books are set within our own real world, but with a sort of magical overlay. In this sense, Gaiman reminds me of Magical Realism more than Fantasy, though he relies more heavily on magic than, say, Gabriel García Márquez does. [I'm not sure I understand where Magical Realism ends and Fantasy begins. Can somebody enlighten me?]
Anyway, Anansi Boys. It's very clever and dryly funny. It has sympathetic, dynamic characters and smart references to West African mythology and folklore. The plotting is brilliant, there's some nice foreshadowing, and then a real page-turner of a climax. It's a quick, exciting read, and I enjoyed it. Anansi Boys is very different from American Gods in that it is lighthearted and tightly-woven, and I found the characters far more likeable.
BUT. I do have some complaints. I couldn't overlook the occasional line of cheesy, action-movie-ish dialogue, and most of the dénouement was almost sickeningly sweet. I'm not a big fan of the cover design (not the author's fault). And, to be honest, magical fiction just isn't really my personal favorite.

Verdict: Hm... Yeah, I'm going to stick it on the shelf. It's well-written and you won't be sorry you read it. Neil Gaiman is one of the best in his class, and Anansi Boys doesn't disappoint.

Reading Recommendations: Suspend your disbelief!
If you want to supplement, I recommend one of my favorite picture books, "A Story, A Story" (It's a Caldecott Medal Winner, so any public library should have at least one copy.)
Anansi's Wikipedia article is interesting.
And of course, if you like Anansi Boys you can check out American Gods.

Warnings: Some innuendo, a bit of violence, a little language. Nothing horribly offensive, but it's not squeaky-clean either.

Favorite excerpts:
"He could see the sunrise beginning, a huge blood orange of a morning sun surrounded by gray clouds tinged with scarlet. It was the kind of sky that makes even the most prosaic person discover a deeply buried urge to start painting in oils."

And the best dedication page I've ever read:
"You know how it is. You pick up a book, flip to the dedication, and find that, once again, the author has dedicated a book to someone else and not you.
Not this time.
Because we haven't yet met/have only a glancing acquaintance/are just crazy about each other/haven't seen each other in much too long/are in some way related/will never meet, but will, I trust, despite that, always think fondly of each other...
this one's for you.
With you know what, and you probably know why."

What I'm reading next: Waffle Street by James Adams

The Saga of the Volsungs

Reviewed by Ingrid

The Saga of the Volsungs (Völsungasaga) is a thirteenth century Icelandic text based on Viking Agepoems and Norse mythology. The author is unknown.

Published: translation published in 1990 by Jesse L. Byock

It's about: Ahem: "The Saga of the Volsungs combines mythology, legend, and sheer human drama," or so claims the back cover of my Penguin edition

of this book. The Saga narrates the many adventures of the Volsung family, including Sigi - who kills his slave and is exiled, Sigmund - who pulls a sword from a tree, and Sigurd, who steals gold from the dragon Fafnir. The saga is purely narrative, containing almost no descriptive details whatsoever. There are many references and even quotes from older stories contained in the Poetic Edda.

I thought: I liked it. It was a fairly quick read, possibly just the right length - not too long to become boring. It was interesting to read about certain characters from Norse mythology that I had heard of before but hadn't known much about. The edition I read (Penguin Classics) included a great introduction, glossary, and notes that I found extremely helpful. I'm not as interested in The Lord of the Rings, which apparently was heavily influenced by the Saga and other Norse texts, though I am more interested in Wagner's opera The Ring of the Nibelung, also influenced by the Saga. Knowing how influential this text is was one of the primary reasons I read it.

Verdict: I think I'm going to say this one is In Between. The story is cool, the history is interesting, but ... I'm just not all that into magic and dragons and capes and all those "magickal" kind of things.

Reykjavik, Iceland

Reading Recommendations: Anyone who is interested in Norse mythology will definitely be more likely to enjoy this book.

Warnings: Swords, chopping people up, incest, women whose lives are based solely around embroidering into tapestries the stories of their male relatives' lives, and other crazy stuff.

Favorite excerpts: "There was a dwarf named Andvari ... he was always in the waterfall called Andvari's Fall. He was in the shape of a pike and caught food there for himself, for there were many fish in the falls."

The Power of Myth by Joseph Campbell with Bill Moyers

Reviewed by Ingrid


Published: 1988

It's about:

"The images of myth are reflections of the spiritual potentialities of every one of us. Through contemplating these, we evoke their powers in our own lives."

This book is based on a series of conversations between journalist Bill Moyers and Joseph Campbell, a well known scholar in the fields of comparative mythology and comparative religion. They converse on a number of topics having to do with the nature of mythology in modern and past societies, and its effect on the human experience.

What I drew from this book was first and foremost a more clear understanding on how to read deeply into a narrative, specifically in understanding the function of metaphor. Campbell and Moyers discuss how the basic framework of myth parallels a spiritual framework within the self, then acts a sort of spiritual map to guide one through the journey of life using differing sets of symbols. Campbell describes how these symbols work using a whole bunch of cool examples.

Basically, this book will tell you how ancient and modern mythology relates directly and personally with you, and what to do about it.

I thought:

I loved this book. Not only did I learn more than I ever expected about mythology and religion, but I also learned more about the nature of literature and gained insight into my own spirituality.

The transcript form of this book was a little strange to get used to, though I think the conversational nature of this layout made such a theoretical topic much more accessible and compelling to read.

If you just read one chapter of this book, please please read chapter 5: The Hero's Adventure.

Verdict:

Stick it on the shelf, or at least check it out from the library and look through it! It will change you.

Warnings:

There is a bit of sexuality and violence in here, simply because Campbell uses specific myths that deal with these issues to illustrate his ideas.

Favorite excerpts:

"To see life as a poem and yourself participating in a poem is what the myth does for you [. . .] I mean a vocabulary in the form not of words but of acts and adventures, which connotes something transcendent of the action here, so that you always feel in accord with the universal being."

"Shakespeare said that art is a mirror held up to nature. And that's what it is. The nature is your nature, and all of these wonderful poetic images of mythology are referring to something in you."

"Myth must be kept alive. The people who can keep it alive are artists of one kind or another. The function of the artist is the mythologization of the environment and the world."


*Note: If anyone actually reads this book I will take you to lunch. I'm dying to discuss it with someone!