Review - Shadowlands

Shadowlands by Leonore Fleischer

My rating: 4 of 5 stars

To tell you the truth, I didn't expect much from a book that is a novel "based on the screenplay by William Nicholson based on his stage play." However, I was pleasantly surprised by the . . . joy of reading it! A few editing issues--a repeated paragraph here and there, etc. Other than that, however, the writing was smooth and vivid.

This book is based on the true story of C.S. Lewis' romance and marriage with Joy Davidman Gresham. Lewis, in his fifties and settled into the life of a university teacher and bachelor, thought that he knew what love was--until he realized, thanks to Joy, that he had been putting up walls to keep his feelings in and people out ever since his mother died when he was nine years old. Through his marriage to Joy, C.S. Lewis came alive again and was finally able to understand the wonder and the suffering that he had been lecturing about for so long.

Lewis' story resonated with me, as I have also been through a lot of pain in my life and a lot of effort to protect myself from it. Person by person and book by book, I catch glimpses of freedom through the holes in my own walls, making joyful connections to the other side. For, as the father of one of Lewis' students is reported in this story to have said, "We read to know that we're not alone."


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