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Title: Lenten Lands: My Childhood with Joy Davidman and C.S. Lewis by Douglas H. Gresham ISBN: 0-06-063447-2 Publisher: Harper SanFrancisco Pub. Date: 03 June, 1994 Format: Paperback Volumes: 1 List Price(USD): $9.95 |
Average Customer Rating: 4.09 (11 reviews)
Rating: 4
Summary: An honest recollection, full of angst and grief. . .
Comment: . . .written by one of Joy Davidman's sons (and CS Lewis's stepson).
This is not a book primarily about CS Lewis. It is not a book primarily about Joy Davidman. Those who pick up this volume looking for a "biography" will be disappointed. Rather, the book is a painful exploration of the trials and tribulations of a young man faced with:
1) abuse by a violent father (whom he still loved)
2) the controversial marriage of his mother to a prominent public figure (whom he also loved, despite a sometimes difficult relationship)
3) the illness and death of his mother (1960)
4) the illness and death of his stepfather (1963)
5) the illness and suicide of his father (1964)
6) the normal "angst" of the growing-up years.
Considered from this perspective, I suspect that the book was a form of catharsis for Douglas; a sort of "coming-to-grips" with years of pain and uncertainty.
This sort of "from the heart" revealatory book will NOT suit all tastes (as is evident from the tenor of some of the other reviews). But taken for what it is, the book provides valuable insight into the Lewis "family".
Rating: 5
Summary: A charming story.
Comment: Unlike some reviewers, I found Lenten Lands well-written, poignant, and honest, though it dies a bit towards the end. (As auto-biographies often do -- if the author doesn't die first, like Moses.) I am not sure why some reviewers complain that Douglas chose to tell his story, even if his memories of Lewis were not as full, say, as George Sayers, and he has lived a fairly simple, even blue-color, life at times. Greshem's descriptions of growing up, the houses he lived in, taking the boat to England, London and Oxford, and the Kilns, were all interesting to me, though as a fan of Lewis I was of course anticipating scenes of his life. Greshem brings nature, his feelings, the drama of watching his mother come to love C. S. Lewis and the love returned, then her death, to life. The scene in which his dying but still fiercely defensive mother confronts a trespasser with a shotgun, C. S. Lewis standing alarmed at her side, and yells, "Get out of my line of fire, Jack!", and the scenes that follow, made me laugh for a fair chunk of an hour.
I didn't expect this book to all be about Lewis; hasn't he had enough pure biographies already? I was pleased to learn much more about Joy, whom Douglas and "Jack" both greatly loved. (Having read her Smoke on the Mountain, I agree she had talent and insight -- though Douglas' claim that she was an intellectual match for Lewis should be described as filial, I think.) Lenten Lands seemed to me an honest and thoughtful story, and I found myself reading it very quickly.
Rating: 4
Summary: A decade with C.S. Lewis, up close and personal.
Comment: No true die-hard student of C.S. Lewis can pass on a reading of this book, and here's why:
Lenten Lands provides a perspective of Lewis that you can get nowhere else... the perspective of a stepson.
There are many books about Lewis the academician, Lewis the lay-theologian... Lewis the prolific author/poet... but a first-hand account of Lewis the around-the-house stepdad? Trust me, you will find THAT nowhere but here!
And it's an important perspective, this day-to-day life at the Kilns in Oxford, because many misconceptions about Lewis are cleared up in the midst of Douglas Gresham's recollections.
As other reviewers have noted, this is technically a biography of Douglas Gresham rather than of C.S. Lewis. The opening chapters are of the Gresham family in Staatsburg, New York. Then, in 1953, as a child, Douglas met Lewis for the first time in Oxford. By this time, Joy Davidman (Douglas' mother) was already acquainted with Lewis. Three years later (1956) the two were married in the Registry Office, but not before Joy's illness was already fairly advanced. The following year (1957) their vows are re-instated by the Rev. Peter Bide in Wingfield-Morris Hospital. Three years later Joy dies from cancer.
Then, three years after this, on a somber November evening while eighteen-year-old Douglas is still digesting the fact that President Kennedy has just been assassinated, he receives the news that Lewis has died.
"On that day... there was a bitter stillness about the world; for the second time in my life everything I knew, everything I held dear and the one person I loved had been swept away." I found this portion of the book to be especially moving.
The following year (1964) Douglas' birth father commits suicide.
A few final chapters tell of Douglas' own marriage and settlings in Tasmania and mainland Australia.
But the bulk of Lenten Lands consists of Douglas' decade of knowing C.S. Lewis. A very well-written book, the title being borrowed from a phrase in Joy's epitaph, written by Lewis.
As I read Lenten Lands I was reminded of something C.S. Lewis said long before ever knowing the Greshams. In his "Abolition of Man" (published 1943) he said "I myself do not enjoy the society of small children... I recognize this as a defect in myself."
Again, in a private letter to his friend Arthur Greeves (December 1935) Lewis commented "I theoretically hold that one ought to like children, but I am shy with them in practice."
Yet Douglas concludes that his decade of knowing Lewis was a "privilege"... "a gift of education and experience greater than some of us gain in a lifetime."
His statement confirms my own suspicion about Lewis... that he was a man of such inner greatness, that he proved to be good even at the things he was not good at.
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Title: Jack: A Life of C.S. Lewis by George Sayer ISBN: 0891077618 Publisher: Crossway Books Pub. Date: January, 1994 List Price(USD): $19.99 |
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Title: C. S. Lewis Through the Shadowlands: The Story of His Life With Joy Davidman by Brian Sibley ISBN: 080078670X Publisher: Spire Books Pub. Date: October, 1999 List Price(USD): $6.99 |
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Title: And God Came In: The Extraordinary Story of Joy Davidman by Lyle W. Dorsett, Lyle W. Dorsett ISBN: 0345317874 Publisher: Ballantine Books Pub. Date: 12 October, 1984 List Price(USD): $2.95 |
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Title: Smoke on the Mountain: An Interpretation of the Ten Commandments by Joy Davidman, C. S. Lewis ISBN: 066424680X Publisher: Westminster John Knox Press Pub. Date: November, 1985 List Price(USD): $18.95 |
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Title: A Love Observed by Lyle W. Dorsett ISBN: 087788479X Publisher: Shaw Pub. Date: 07 March, 2000 List Price(USD): $11.99 |
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