Review: Till We Have Faces

This review is, for many, many reasons, very difficult to write. To begin with, I should be doing things for my wedding in about a week, and as such I find myself a little distracted. For another, this is my favorite book from my favorite author, and I wonder if I will be able to give it the praise it deserves without being sycophantic. Well, all I can do is give it my best shot, right?

Genre: fiction

Plot: This is a retelling of the Greek myth Psyche and Cupid, set in a barbaric kingdom called Glome. Lewis tells the story through the eyes of Orual, Psyche's older sister/mother figure, writing a long complaint against the gods for what they have done to her. His chief change to the story, which seems like such a small thing but has such brilliant ramifications to it, is to make Psyche's palace invisible to mortal eyes.

Structure: The book is unequally divided into two parts. In the lengthier Part One, Orual, seething with hatred and wrath for the gods, sets down to write her story once and for all and to show how unjust, how unfair, the gods have been to her. She begins in her early childhood, and carries it all the way to late adulthood, telling of her kingdom, her relationship with her sisters, the great sacrifice of Psyche, and the choices she made in trying to cope with what happened to her and her family.

Part Two is an answer to her initial writing. She receives an answer from the gods, a change in perspective, and writes an amendment to her initial, raging work. Part of my enchantment with this novel is its unusual epistolary structure (which has fallen out of favor in modern literature, much to my dismay), which is a perfect platform for the emotional story Lewis sets out to tell.

Execution: Lewis is a master of the English language, no doubt about it. His prose is perfect, suited exactly for the dark, heavy language of an ancient world and yet full of modern sparkle (where, I think, he vastly improved upon his colleague Tolkien). More than that, he gives touches of allegory. What do I mean by "touches?" I mean that you cannot come at this book straight on and say, "ah, this must be a symbol for this." It's too artless. This is a story that demands to be taken in sideways. You cannot come at it from the front; you have to come at it sideways and see glimpses, parallels, of what he alludes to. This to me is what makes this a supremely good book. Like true theology, clear, rational thinking gets you a little ways.

One of the best things about this work, I think, is that it combines Lewis' rich depth of knowledge, imagination, and deep questions without easy answers (why must holy places be dark?). It marries his fertile imagination with a powerful, emotional story; I think we all see ourselves in Orual, and so she touches us deeply. Her rage, her confusion, her disbelief and frustration are all ours. Her shock when she discovers she is, deep down, dark and ugly and selfish, is ours. And her ultimate redemption gives us hope. The pathos, the empathetic imagining which makes this story so distant and beautiful but also so near and real, that is what makes this a masterpiece.

Theme: Greek myth (Psyche and Cupid), love, sacrifice, allegory, philosophy

Read this if you want the richly imagined world of Tolkien in a lighter prose. This is, I think, also good for those dark nights of the soul when we wonder what God is doing or where he is.

5 out of 5 stars

Other works:
Lewis is a prolific author, but some of his best loved works are:
The Pilgrim's Regress
The Space Trilogy
The Chronicles of Narnia
Mere Christianity
The Screwtape Letters
The Four Loves

If you liked this, you might also like:
Carolyn Parkhurst's The Dogs of Babel - another story of love and loss