“Till We Have Faces” – A Review

Sorry about the absence folks…sometimes it feels like there are no words left. None to express the everyday horror of living – the mundane. As I’ve gotten older I’ve learned to hate the mundane, the little details of living – waking, eating, sleeping, and the cycle all over again. I want to wake to endless curiosity and wonder, I want to be surprised by life, and as I get older that isn’t always the case. Things become a little too routine. Even the things that once gave me endless pleasure seem hollow. It’s one of the reasons I haven’t been able to finish a bona fide piece of fiction in ages. Until this weekend, that is.

A good friend of mine walked into my office last Monday with Till We Have Faces by C.S. Lewis. He insisted that I read the book, the implication being that there were lessons I needed to learn. I started off the first couple of pages and was immediately reminded of Colleen McCullough’s Song of Troy – a manifestly awful tome. I know, I know, The Thorn Birds! Spare me. Troy is a pseudo re-writing of Homer’s Illiad. The story remains the same for the most part, except that the characters are all completely unappealing and unsympathetic. Even Hector and Andromache come across as twits, and that’s hard to do. (Anyone remember Tennyson’s amazing Hector’s Farewell to Andromache – now that ‘s what I call art.) Anyhoo, having read the opening pages of Till We Have Faces, I felt I had another Troy on my hands and promptly put the book away. Saturday rolled around and I realized that I needed to take on the challenge of finishing the book. Much to my delight, this novel is nothing like Troy and may even have served as an inspiration for McCullough.

For those of you not familiar with the book, Till We Have Faces is a retelling of the Psyche and Eros tale. In this telling of the myth, none of the characters neatly fit the archetypes of hero or villain. The novel focuses on Psyche’s relationship with her eldest sister, Orual, and traces the making of the myth. Narrated in the first person by Orual, the novel switches between angry diatribes to lamentations, with Orual constantly grieving over Psyche and angry at being stuck in the act of living. As this is a C.S. Lewis novel there are plenty of religious themes in the novel, but you don’t have to be a Christian or even religious to respond to the characters’ struggles with accepting the will of the gods.

Upon the first few readings of the novel you’ll be most tempted to side with Orual. She is an undoubtedly sympathetic character, her faults seem so much like our own (or maybe there’s just something really wrong with me), and her virtues those we might wish to aspire to. But the last section of the novel shifts our perception of Orual and it’s possible to understand that Psyche’s tale is just as important as Orual’s, her choices just as difficult, her grief just as great.(Notice that I’m not letting on much? Good, read the book!) Alternative versions of classical myths are constantly being written, but few offer the insightful perspectives to human nature that Lewis does. He captures the depths we can sink to and the heights we will reach to – all for the sake of love. So…I hope you’ll give the book a try and let me know what you think. Are you Orual, Psyche, or both?

(And if you’re wondering about the lessons I was expected to learn from the novel, it has something to do with getting a face.)