Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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26 of 26 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Best Williams So Far..., September 3, 2005
Working through Williams's seven novels I come to "Place of the Lion" fourth (after "Shadows of Ecstasy", "War in Heaven", and "Many Dimensions"). "...Lion" is in some ways the most simple to read of these four, with the most cohesive narrative and fewest extraneous characters. Conceptually, it may be the most difficult of the four, but a simple, definitional understanding of Platonic Ideals is all that is required to open it up to everyone. With that caveat, I find "Place of the Lion" the best of the four novels mentioned. True to Williams's norm, the fantastical pops into the book within the first half-dozen pages and never retreats. Also of the four, "...Lion" is most clearly applicable to life, with particularly valuable insights into the transcendence of love - most overtly of eros and friendship, but of charity and affection as well (see CS Lewis - "The Four Loves" for an excellent non-fiction treatment of the same topics). All-in-all...very good and highly recommended.
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24 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A stunning book for the philosophically inclined, November 20, 1998
By A Customer
Living manifestations of Platonic archtypes invade the earth (a lion embodies courage, a butterfly beauty, etc.) in this supernatural thriller. The destiny of an uncharitable young woman, neurotically absorbed in her doctoral dissertation, hangs in the balance. This is a great read for anyone, but especially for those who struggle with balancing their intellectual pursuits and "the real world."
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34 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
"Difficult" with a capital D., May 21, 2002
This is the fourth Williams book I have read. For me, it's been the most difficult to understand, so far. One needs to be schooled (and schooled fairly thoroughly) in philosophy to fully appreciate what is going on here in The Place Of The Lion.
I am not, and don't.
A reader of this book also needs to know a bit about Williams himself. As a neo-Platonist he did not see God acting alone to create the universe, but as the creator also of sub-creators, which are traditionally known as the angelic hierarchies. For Williams, these were ever-present realities, ruling not only the great principles of creation, but also having the ability to burst in and effect the lives and destinies of men, whether on a group or individual basis. Here in The Place Of The Lion these universal powers are inadvertently stumbled upon by a Platonic meditation group led by a Mr. Berringer. Now, according to Platonic theory, behind the visible world lies the invisible world of Ideas. That is, behind every chair we observe, whether it is a King's throne or a leprechaun's toadstool, lies the Idea of "chairness". There is, so to speak, an eternal Chair from which all chairs proceed. This applies to everything in our world; a table is an instance of the Idea of tables, or of the Table; a man and a woman are cases in point of Maleness and Femaleness. In other words, if there is anything that may be called "unreal" says the Platonist, it is this transitory world of mere appearances which we live in.The picture which Williams chose for The Place Of The Lion is this Platonic one. It so happens that on one occasion, Mr. Berringer's meditation is deep enough to cause a rupture in the divide between the outer and inner worlds. He is out walking in a condition almost of trance, deep in meditation upon the Platonic idea of strength and kingship, using the archetypal image of a lion. In this state, it so happens that his path is crossed by a real lioness which has escaped from a local circus or zoo. The animal attacks him but the remarkable result is that the lioness vanishes into thin air, and Berringer falls into a cataleptic trance, while the mighty figure of a maned lion is seen walking away - the very archetypal image on which he had been meditating.
Bizarre huh? It's only beginning. He now lies in a coma, and his home and the surrounding area become the place of severe archetypal activity. At one point, the archetypal enormous butterfly appears and all the normal butterflys of the world fly back into it. Totally wild.
I cannot begin to scratch the surface of all the very strange happenings that take place in the book, but I think overall it is meaning to say that man ought to be able to rule all of these forces. There is one man in the book that does, and the story ends with him as a second Adam "naming the beasts" and establishing dominion over them.
To "get it" and maintain interest in this book a reader should have a pre-familiarity with Platonic theory. It is by no means an easy read.
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