Till we have faces
Book Review (C.S. Lewis)
I almost started this review with, "I've never really read any fiction by C.S. Lewis" but then there's always Narnia. I always forget about Narnia, and I tend to think of Lewis as mostly a non-fiction writer, but that's not really true at all. I think people tend to be either (a) Narnia fans, or (b) Lewis theology fans, but not many people read a lot of his other fiction. Anyway, a long introduction to say that I saw this review by Joel Miller a while back, and put TWHF onto my reading list since. A promise I've now fulfilled...
TWHF is a retelling of the story of Psyche and Cupid, told from the perspective of one of Psyche's sisters. Lewis does a marvellous job of resituating the story in a non-Greek but somewhat non-descript, almost-placeable-but-not-quite setting. From the outset you gain genuine sympathy and identity with the narrator's voice (the sister), which is vital for the story as it unfolds.
A little bit of ignorance about the story, or at least forgetfulness, helps you also inhabit the story as it unfolds. Though I think knowing the 'canonical' version also helps, in that it gives you a different reading experience as you tackle this as classical reception. I also found it engaging to continue to reflect upon the title, and think about characters and their seen and unseen faces, throughout.
I think part of the genius of Lewis' retelling lies in its thorough believability. We understand Orual, sympathise with her, and even if we wouldn't always make the same choices we understand those that she does. And we are cheering for her.
The whole book takes a dramatic turn about 2/3rds in, in that you're told the tale as Orual looks back over her life, and the story comes to her "present day", and then the book's all done. Except there's part 2, which is her opening up the same scroll and essentially writing her own extended epilogue. The events of the after-tale cast the whole previous tale in a new light, and we see Orual as we never saw her before, and with her are plunged into a re-evaluation of everything we thought we knew.
Orual presents her tale as an indictment of the gods, and to the gods she herself must go in the final reckoning. Lewis, in many ways like Tolkien but not, has this knack of really inhabiting a pre-Christian world and making it utterly real but also drenching it in Christian themes, without being naff or cringy about it. And, true to form, we return to the title towards the end, and are face to face with the question of faces.
Reading is dreadfully dull if you never spend any time on fiction!