Customer Reviews

All Hallows' Eve

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4 star:		(7)
3 star:		(3)
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1 star:		(4)

 

 

This probably qualifies as the strangest book i've read all year. I was reminded of Williams by reading C.S. Lewis's letters; i had read one of his books before, "Descent into Hell" i think, and remembered the strangeness, but this really is amazing. How many other books do you know in which one of the two main characters is dead, in which the dead and living can communicate almost as easily as we do every day, in which magic is serious and scary? Mainstream books, that is, not Goosebumps, with an introduction by T.S. Eliot, with the whole thing to be understood as at least feasible if not truth. This is unusual. And yet, and yet the whole thing works. It is the story of two dead women, killed during an air raid on war-torn London, and the choices they make ~ or the choices they made while alive ~ and how they affect the world of the still living. It is also the story of an evil (American) magus, Simon, who practises (actually, he's very good at it) real black magic. His desire to rule the world, and the plan he has to use his daughter to gain the power to do so, is in the end defeated by Lester, one of the dead women, her husband, his friend, and the friend's fiancée ~ Simon the Clerk's daughter. The evil is real, overbearing, even, though it is bizarre; one gets the idea that all the Clerk does is feasible, that Williams has experienced evil in his life, that he knows whereof he writes. The descriptions of the dead, of the City they inhabit (both London and not-London), are also real, persuasive; Williams must have had some foreknowledge, one feels, to write the way he wrote. Reading him takes quite an investment, of time, of thought, of disbelief suspension; it is, however, well worth the cost: The payoff is a gripping book, plenty of thought, and a clearer vision of life. I shall have to read another Williams, but perhaps not too soon.

Published in 1945 and still in print, this is the last of the novels of Charles Williams, who along with J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis was one of the Oxford literary group the Inklings. The recent increase in popularity of his fiction, initially boosted by his association with the Inklings, is probably due to the current success of the Frank Peretti thrillers, and the LaHaye-Jenkins 'Left Behind' series. However, in contrast to the current populists Mr Williams is intellectually quite a demanding read.

All Hallows Eve is another Williams ghost story, gently told in his own highly unorthodox style. Two young women have been killed in an accident in the aftermath of the WWII air raids on London, but their ghostly participation in the story is as real as that of any of the living people. It is probably fair to say that this novel, as with most Charles Williams fiction, is not recommended for the overly sensitive person, and could easily be misinterpreted the overly hasty.

Simon LeClerk is a powerful mage, more a Saruman than a Gandalf, and his plan is domination of this world and - more worryingly - any other that he can access. His adoring acolytes form the powerbase of his support for a new world religion. Betty, daughter of one of these acolytes, is the unwilling dupe of the magician, and the key subject in his most daring and horrible experiment. An artist is the bereaved husband of Evelyn, one of the ghosts, and a civil servant is Betty's intended husband.

The characters have depth and robust individual style. While many an author can paint real villains doing convincingly bad things, Williams is unusual in that his good characters and their goodness are equally if not more convincing. Their goodness is genuinely felt and is strongly attractive. There is no hint that the villains have all the fun or that the author really has little idea of how to portray true goodness, or even what it is.

From this novel I also gained a valuable insight into the true nature and function of art. Rather like 'The Picture of Dorian Gray', two of the artist's paintings play a pivotal part in the story. The artist manages in one picture to catch and portray something of a hidden truth about the city of London, and in the other something about the magician himself (who approves of the picture). As these things could not be captured by any mere photograph, the art has to say what can best be said, or perhaps only be said, in a painting.

While the premise of ghosts as major characters took a little bit to adjust to, I found that Williams developed supernatural characters and a supernatural world that seemed as solid and "real" as the natural world. It is a wonderful novel that explores so many deep concepts - heaven and hell, the reality of the supernatural, the nature of evil and its limitations, body and soul,... In fact, the main difficulty with the novel is the fact that it explores so many deep questions, and dwells so much on the inner thoughts of the characters. These aspects make the novel a difficult (yet rewarding) read. I found that I needed several hours of completely uninterrupted time to really get into the novel. Then, I couldn't put it down.

Whatever your ideas of heaven and hell, they will never be the same after reading Charles Williams. Whether the new images will be comfortable or not is another question. In some ways Williams's picture of heaven is, if anything, more frightening than the conventional depiction of hell. It's certainly considerably more compelling. His dead protagonist was one scared woman--and so was I, for most of the novel. In "All Hallows' Eve" Williams gives his eschatological images expression in their leanest, purest form, mingled with other terrific and similarly life-threatening images of the war that was then engulfing the world. Read it!

Creepiest book I've ever read. The occult, the dead, evil magicians, ordinary colourless people, and a conspiracy of a changing malevolent world order just beneath the surface of things.

The story arc is difficult to describe, but the two lead characters are dead girls operating in a depopulated limbo, with occasional glimpses of where they are heading (Hell and Heaven) and where they have been (the mortal world). Secondary characters include well-intentioned, but hapless young men, an evil grand dame, her suppressed daughter, and a monster of a necromancer intent on enslaving humanity and the dead alike.

Williams narrative style borrows much from philology, for the precise and poetic way in which he uses words lulls us into other worlds. This is in fact his thesis, that words are a link to another world, which is why spells and prayers are effective beyond their mere utterance. One wonders what Heidegger and Wittgenstein would have thought, for this is the novelisation and narrative explication of Heidegger's conceptions of being-there, and the refutation of the reductionism inherent in wordly precision that Wittgenstein refuted his own Tractatus and sought the rest of his life in the elusive and indefinable power of mytho-poetic language.

Soft souls avoid, for this is a challenging supernatural read.

All Hallows Eve starts with a detailed scene of a young woman standing at night in a park waiting for her fiance to arrive. She knows that even if he arrives, he will not see her, as she is dead. She has been killed by a 2nd World War aircraft that has just fallen on her. The remainder of the book chronicles her various encounters with strange indivduals, one of whom, of course, is a Satan figure. Williams points discretely and concretely to the presence of God --but of course the reader does not feel set upon by any pentecostal fervor. All of Charles Williams" books entered the scene apropol of the times. Now, seventy years later at the turn of the century, they seem more appropriate than ever. It's really too bad that the publisher has allowed this book to go "out of print", since (1)Charles Williams was a major literary figure of his time, and knew T.S. Eliot, George MacDonald and C.S. Lewis--and they knew and appreciated him as an author and religious mystic. Williams believed he was always in contact with the supernatural or "the other side" --and believed that death was an illusion and delusion. Apparently individuals in the publishing "industry" are only concerned with the immediate profits that they can read on the bottom line. May all of you be visited with some particularly illustrative ghosts. If you read Charles Williams, you will come to conclude that you are not crazy, but have encountered a perception that you can think of as utterly, terrifyingly real. Good luck Charles Williams, whose ever living room desk you are stiting at these days.

All Hallows Eve starts with a detailed scene of a young woman standing at night in a park waiting for her fiance to arrive. She knows that even if he arrives, he will not see her, as she is dead. She has been killed by a 2nd World War aircraft that has just fallen on her. The remainder of the book chronicles her various encounters with strange indivduals, one of whom, of course, is a Satan figure. Williams points discretely and concretely to the presence of God --but of course the reader does not feel set upon by any pentecostal fervor. All of Charles Williams" books entered the scene apropol of the times. Now, seventy years later at the turn of the century, they seem more appropriate than ever.

Charles Williams reveals the occult and makes it everyday reality. And he does this without resorting to traditional western occult conventions or by trying to frighten or mystify anyone. This story includes some characters who are alive and some who are dead, some are magicians and some are lawyers. And yet, they are all treated with the same emphasis and value, their motives and feelings are well within our understanding. Their lives intersect and interesting things happen.Williams has a very christian theology but christian tradition discourages any interest in the occult. William's writings are doubly fascinating for this.

This is a ghost story, but not a horror story. You may get chills reading it, but not always from "the creeps". On the other hand, you may finish it wondering just what the heck you just read. I submit to you All Hallows' Eve-- definitely not for everybody.

All Hallows' Eve is Charles Williams' last novel, written and set in WW2 England. It starts shortly after the tragic deaths of two women friends, Evalyn and Lester, in a bizarre collision, and neither is aware at first that they have died. They wander a weirdly deserted London separately for a brief time before meeting up, which gives the author an opportunity to focus on Lester's inner spiritual journey as she slowly confronts some unattractive truths about herself and her important relationships with her husband and her friends. In a separate but intersecting storyarc, Lester's surviving husband and his artist friend cross paths with a popular cult leader, Simon Le Clerc. This disturbing figure has a hidden past that is revealed only to us, the readers, as the plot unfolds. He is shaping up to be something not unlike an antichrist of sorts who is conducting covert, occultic experiments on the artist's love interest, Betty Wallingford, who is the daughter of one of Le Clerc's most devoted followers.

Williams makes use of Betty's nighttime passages to scratch the surface of an alternate universe which Evelyn, Lester and (presumably) other newly-deceased inhabit. It is simply described as the City, and although it bears a surface resemblance to London, it is more of an infrastructure to London, or perhaps the Platonic Ideal of London...possibly something more. Many things in this realm tantalize us with glimpses of hidden spiritual truths, and time itself seems to have no linear requirement; past, present and future flashbacks occur without regard to conventional order. I was left with the sense that I would have liked to discover more about this City, and as this is my first Williams novel, who knows..he may indeed refer to it in his other stories.

I'm not sure what sort of person would be best prepared to read this final Charles Williams novel. The author (an Anglican, or so I've read) clearly gives his audience much credit, as he allows us to draw our own conclusions about either the allegorical or the literal truths he dallies with along the storyline; he never force-feeds or "preaches". Somebody moderately educated in various religious history and/or theology would recognize a lot of the hints and references Williams makes along the way to telling his story. I wouldn't say that you must be a Christian to appreciate it, but it might help. On the other hand, I would only recommend this book to a mature Christian who has some direct study of the bible under his belt and yet a non-legalistic attitude toward their christian fiction. Certainly the reader would benefit from an ability to appreciate mysticism.

All Hallows' Eve was recommended to me by A Reader's Delight, which appeals to readers who crave rare literary treasures from various genres. Williams' writing style is rich and many-layered, so that I may have to read All Hallows' Eve several times to extract everything I should from it in time. Take that under advisement, and if the shoe fits, do try.
-Andrea, aka Merribelle

All Hallow's Eve, alternately the night when souls walk the world to finish their earthly work and when saints draw near, is the setting for the tale of one such soul. Caught between sainthood and a mediocre life, our heroine must learn the difference between love that only receives and love that actively gives. If she is successful, her actions may thwart the plans of a charismatic madman