Reviews & Recommendations: Lilith by George MacDonald

For the first book examined on this blog, I'm going to start with a somewhat lesser known author: George MacDonald, a Scottish writer and minister from the late 19th early 20th century.  I say "lesser known" because although MacDonald's name has reemerged in the mainstream after nearly fading into obscurity, I do not hear his name said very often, which is a shame.  Many famous authors, such as C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien, considered him a master storyteller, and W. H. Auden likened MacDonald to Poe in his skills.  What's more, MacDonald mentored Lewis Carroll, author of the classic Alice in Wonderland stories.

Admittedly, for a while I actually regarded MacDonald quite lightly, even with his resume.  Yes, I enjoyed reading The Princess and the Goblin, The Princess and Curdie, and The Light Princess.  Also, while it does not attract me much in terms of story, I could see some skillful writing and teaching with At the Back of the North Wind.  However, liking an author's story does not equal admiring the author himself.  I did not understand what these famous authors meant in describing MacDonald as a great teacher and storyteller, at least not until I read Lilith.

Lilith is a novel narrated in first person by a Mr. Vane who, after meeting a mystical raven, is taken  through a mirror into a world of magic and peril.  After losing himself in this other world, Mr. Vane faces the true nature of life and death while seeking redemption for what he once abandoned.  It's a story difficult to describe without spoilers, so I'm afraid I must leave my summary here.

Before continuing, let's get one thing straight: I think MacDonald a better teacher than writer. In many of his stories, Lilith included,  MacDonald's characters are flat.  What's more, the plot starts slow, an often off-putting issue.  Worst of all, though, is that MacDonald has a somewhat convoluted writing style.  Much of the time he is great, with engaging imagery and insightful dialogue, but there are also many places where he writes sentences so long and complicated that I still don't comprehend it even after rereading, yanking me out of the story.  Because of this, the first forth of Lilith proved difficult, and I took a couple weeks to read what I can usually cover in a few hours.

However, after passing that first forth, MacDonald finally began to draw me in when the protagonist, Mr. Vane, meets a group of children in a country of giants.  This episode only covers two chapters, but the children were so likable that I found myself invested.  Then, at the end of the section, MacDonald integrated biblical teaching in such a natural way that I literally stopped and stared at the sentence.  

Perhaps it seems contradictory to say biblical teaching was inserted "naturally" when I ended up arrested in my reading by its surfacing.  What I mean by "natural" is not that it wasn't obvious but rather that there was no sense of being forced into the text.  In my experience, many stories containing Scripture would have been better without it because it's been crammed into the story, slathered on so thick and stuffed so much where it doesn't fit that I feel suffocated.  Even C. S. Lewis's works I think sometimes feels slightly forced, but in that ending sentence of Lilith's 14th chapter, I read a near quote of Scripture as if there were nothing else that could fit there.  It belonged there.

From then on, I raced through the tale like a child on a treasure hunt, having fun on my adventure in an intriguing story and world while watching for allusions to or direct inserts of Scripture.  I found many pieces of theology scattered throughout the story, and those pieces always fit; I never felt suffocated.  In fact, the Scripture enhanced the story by providing plot twists, motivation, and depth.  For the first time, I understood the power of MacDonald's writing and his skills as a teacher.  I have read that Lilith is inferior to MacDonald's novel, Phantastes, due to its direct approach to Scripture rather than allegorical, but even should this be so, I would still place Lilith on the list of "books that every Christian should read," if just as an example of weaving Scripture into story without any apparent seams.

That being said, MacDonald's incorporation of Scripture is not the only reason I recommend this book, especially to Christians.  MacDonald held a rather unorthodox strain of Christianity.  Those who know legends surrounding the character of Lilith might know one of these unorthodoxies, and I find these elements make the book more worthy of mention.  This book stirs thought.  It occasionally presents teachings that are not supported by Scripture and at times might even conflict with the traditional understanding of the Bible; I think Christians need this kind of interaction.  We need to be able to examine a story critically, pointing out and rejecting what is wrong while gleaning what is good.  Shall we throw out the seed because of the husk?  Though there are many stories with which critical thinking could be practiced, I hold Lilith to be an especially profitable story with much more wheat than chaff.

Does this mean I will recommend all books I read for the sake of finding the "seeds" in them?  No, of course not.  Not all tales are beneficial.  Would you make wine of diseased grapes?  Furthermore, the purpose of story is not just to teach but also to entertain.  If I do not enjoy a book, I will not recommend it, even if it should contain 100% sound Doctrine.  In the case of Lilith, I did enjoy it.  I think its story engrossing (when it got started) and world enchanting, and I also think there is much truth worth mining, even if there be the occasional goblins.  But when we should encounter them, let us not despair but instead sing a little tune of truth, for everyone knows goblins hate singing (especially when it is clever), pick up our lanterns and pick axes, and continue digging.  You never know what gem might be just a page turn away.

Lilith (c) George MacDonald

Introduction: On Why & What

Pouring from a page
Running through the air, words are
Water for my soul
-Myself (R. M. Boston)

What then is the good of... occupying our hearts with stories of what never happened and entering vicariously into feelings which we should try to avoid having in our own person?  Or fixing our inner eye earnestly on things that can never exist...?  The nearest I have yet to got to an answer is that we seek an enlargement of our being.  We want to be more than ourselves....  We want to see with other eyes, to imagine with other imaginations, to feel with other hearts, as well as with our own....  We demand windows.
-C. S. Lewis, An Experiment in Criticism¹


It has been said to me that one should avoid beginning an article of one's own writing by quoting someone else's.  However, I cannot remember the reason why.  If it is to keep from making your own writing appear inferior, then I am fully willing to admit Mr. Lewis my superior and move on.  That said, I do wonder if the principle counts considering I placed some of my own words before Lewis's.  Well, whatever the case, the reason I began this first post with that amateur poem of mine and that famous quote from C. S. Lewis is to lead into a point: why I began this blog.

Words are precious to me.  They are like water to my mind and soul, and the creative and skilled use of words in the form of fiction is like a clear spring or lake in the desert of life in which I can immerse myself, or like raindrops drumming against the window, a sound pleasing to my ears and both (paradoxically) relaxing and stimulating to my mind.  Even when the overall experience turns out unpleasant, as if being caught in a storm without shelter, I would not wish to live without words, without stories, without reading and writing, listening and speaking stories.  Or, to put it in Lewis's terms, I would not wish to live without windows.

What's more, I seem unable to prevent my thoughts on stories from spilling out.  As the recipients of my letters, and my family, might have noticed, it has recently become increasingly difficult for me to keep my thoughts on the matter of story to myself.  Not only do I love reading stories, I love speaking about them.  Strange as it may seem after so much praise for the written word, I only realized this second love a few months ago when the nomadic poet in me (here today, gone for the next who-knows-how-long) penned the first draft of the poem at the start of this post.  I do not claim to be skilled at poetry, but writing those words was powerful to me.  For some time, the rain had been pouring and cracks forming; and at last I felt I did not want to just keep my thoughts to my letters and conversations.  There is only so much you can say before you need extra postage or must change the topic for the sake of avoiding the fall into one-sided rambling.  The river has flooded; the dam has broken.  The words refuse to be confined any longer.

I wish I could say I decided to start this blog because of some noble goal, such as bettering society or some other high concept, but that is simply not the truth: I began this blog because I want, perhaps even need, to talk about stories.  Nothing more.  If there is some "higher goal" to be found, it would be that I wish to provide my understanding of stories, the understanding of a single Christian with a Judeo-Christian worldview, and to recommend stories I enjoy, whether "Christian" or not, to others, though even that goal is probably too "low" for many of my fellow Christians.  Should my words, by the grace of God, indeed "help" someone, whatever you might mean by that word, then I shall of course be elated, but that is not the purpose of this blog.  I also am not attempting to shake the world with my "profound" insights or anything like that; I write because I love reading and writing and stories, and isn't it natural that what you love you usually wish to share?

Now that the "why" aspect of this blog is, hopefully, explained, I wish to cover the more technical side of this blog, the "what".  As stated above, this blog will be about stories, about the different windows I have looked through, the other eyes I've seen with.  Posts will be published once a week, probably on Monday or Tuesday, and will fall under one of three categories:

Reviews & Recommendations: (Mostly) spoiler-free looks at a story (usually a novel or novel series), looking at what I like or didn't like, such as story, writing style, characters, etc. and whether or not I recommend the story to others

Spoiler Shelf: A deeper investigation on one or more aspects of a book or series, comparing pieces to each other, etc. (will contain spoilers, of course)

Personal Musings: My thoughts on the various aspects of writing, the tools and conventions and elements of story

As you can see, I will not just be discussing books I have read, but the act of writing as well.  Stories are not just meant to be read; they are to be written.  As a fiction writer myself, I have read and thought much about the elements of writing and stories, and I do not think I can have a blog about my interaction with stories if I do not include speaking on the building blocks of the narratives as well.

Finally, I wish to address some of what this blog will not cover.  While this is a blog about stories, I will not cover mediums such as film, music, video games, poetry, and stage productions.  I will be focusing on prose fiction.  Please understand; I do not at all hold these other mediums to be inferior forms of storytelling.  In fact, one of my favorite stories ever is a Japanese graphic novel/animated tv show.  No, the reason I restrict myself to prose is simply because that is where my heart lies.  When it is fitting, I will refer to these other mediums, and maybe I shall sporadically do a post covering a story in one of these other mediums, but when it comes to the main content of this blog, I shall limit myself to prose narratives.

With the groundwork laid out, it's time to conclude this post.  Next week will be the first review, in which I shall talk about a novel I think illustrates well the approach to literature I wish to have and discuss on this blog.  Thank you for your time, and welcome to Water, Words, & Windows!


¹Lewis, C. S.  An Experiment in Criticism.  Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1961.  Print.