Customer Reviews

Narnia and Beyond: A Guide to the Fiction of C. S. Lewis

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With the buzz generated by the new Narnia movie it makes absolute sense that Ignatius would title this book as a Narnia tie-in. As one of those who dislikes buying the same book under two different titles, however, I feel constrained to note that it's actually a reprint of Howard's C.S. Lewis: Man of Letters. It may also be related to an earlier Howard book entitled The Achievement of C.S. Lewis. I have no idea if this new edition has been edited or updated, but there's only one chapter on Narnia. The rest of the essays focus on what is generally termed Lewis' "space trilogy" (one essay for each of the three books) and his last fiction work, 'Till We Have Faces."

Readers may have seen Howard on a recent Narnia-related special on the Hallmark Channel, of which this book is a natural follow-up. I had the opportunity to hear some of this material given in lectures by Howard at Seattle Pacific University in connection with a C.S. Lewis conference. In Howard's book, The Novels of Charles Williams, he suggests reading the chapter for the relevant Williams novel as a sort of companion. He further developed this "reader's" approach in Dove Descending, a recently published guide to T.S. Eliot's poetry cycle, The Four Quartets. That advice especially applies here for readers of Lewis' three volume space trilogy, the Narnian Chronicles and 'Till We Have Faces. Readers new to Howard might find his discursive, ruminating style somewhat off-putting; when will he get to the point? But longtime Howardphiles (of which I am one) find his thoughtful rambles absolutely addicting. Regardless, Lewis fans will find here a literate and sympathetic reader who loves the books as much as they do, one uniquely qualified to take them further up and further in.