Reviews for Great Divorce

The average rating for Great Divorce based on 2 reviews is 5 stars.

Review # 1 was written on 2018-05-01 00:00:00 Garry Beck Imagine that you awoke one morning to find yourself wandering the streets of a grimy, gritty little twilit city in the middle of Nowhere. You meander past endless shuttered and decrepit storefronts advertising nothing anyone would ever possibly want or need... ...to find yourself joining a long queue that is forming in a dark, gloomy side street. You wait and wait, not knowing for what earthly reason you are there, among a crowd of obnoxious and surly rivals for the front of the line. Where are we? Well, first off, we're dead. And this is Hell, of course! Our worldly and blasé attitude while living has decreed it. That, says Lewis, is where most of us will start our Journey (and his friend and fellow Inkling Charles Williams agreed). And why the lineup? We are being given a second chance - to board a tour bus to Heaven. And if we like it... we won't ever need to come back. You may have to work a bit, though... no, actually, MUCH MORE than a bit... But wait till you see Lewis' HEAVEN! C.S. Lewis' Magical Mystical Tour will show you a weird 'n wonderful kind of paradise - a BRIGHT, ZANY, and very HARD and SOLID place of eternal 'rest' your current mindset may not be ready for! A place of truly tough CHALLENGES. Sharp, solid grass blades. Hard, solid but fast-moving blue waves of an Eternal Sea. Totally alive mythological creatures roaming freely and happily through Eternal Glades. A place of departure - for the final Great Pilgrimage: across rugged mountainous peaks, to your ultimate Heart's Desire - a sacred grove of Deep Eternal Peace. But The Great Divorce, of course, is only Narnia in embryo, just as Eliot's Ash Wednesday is only the drawing board for the radiant Apocalypse of Four Quartets... Narnia, Lewis' later view of the Afterlife, had its genesis in the deep gloom and self-doubt that shrouded Lewis' soul when he was roundly humiliated in a university debate over the existence of God, by Ludwig Wittgenstein's similarly fiercely competitive and agnostic friend, Elizabeth Anscombe. Narnia is Lewis' own afterthought on that debate - a vision of Heaven so stunningly daring in its conception and execution it had to be disguised as a children's book - a book also wondrously enlivened by the December-of-his-life romance with his soon-to-be wife, Joy Davidman. And it is an Afterlife in which we ALL will play a part. Like it or not. Things in Heaven may not be what they seem, and as Lewis' buddy T.S. Eliot warned, we'll have to discard all sense and habitual notions once we get there! But both these guys are really only reminding us of that old, old boogie-woogie revival tune, "better get-a ready cause I'm giving you the Warnin'..." And that includes a grim warning to the persistent perpetuators of all our Disquiet in this earthly world - for the fruits of all their dark and aggressive mind games will be the endless gloomy twilit streets of that Infernal City we arrived at after we died... Streets that will soon be engulfed in the Blackness of Endless Night, when the Author of our Salvation returns in judgement. So don't shoot the messenger... But, for goodness' sake - and whatever you do - don't miss that BUS!

Review # 2 was written on 2009-10-30 00:00:00 Jennifer Goodwin One of my favorite (if not my favorite) C. S. Lewis works (and I am a C. S. Lewis fan). The insight in this book about God and man's relationship with Him is wonderful. I suppose that many who read this will already know that I'm a Christian. I won't belabor it, if you're interested I'm happy to discuss if you don't want to I won't push my thoughts on you. This is a very readable book and while I suppose the Christian aspects will be obvious it is also possible to simply read the book as a novel. There are some overt "teaching sections" but the book is constructed as a fantasy story told from a narrator's point of view. I've read novels from the point of view of other religions and didn't suffer or find myself suborned into some belief against my will, so I don't think non-Christians would necessarily have a problem with the book. As to Christians I believe most will enjoy this book and find an (strangely when some of it is considered) uplifting story that is also thought provoking, enlightening and even instructional. If you are a non-Christian or even irreligious you might try it and see if you can approach it as a fantasy...that is up to each reader of course. On the religious and philosophical front, the title is a response to Blake's, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell and though the book isn't a direct answer to this work it provides a contrasting and opposed view. Blake's work was written long before this one (1793) and is not as well know as this book. It's not at all necessary to have read it to enjoy this work. I only include this piece of information because I know some will be curious about the title. Finally (and again), yes this is a Christian book and if you are a Christian and approach it so I believe it's possible to get much from this short read. In studying the Triune-God and wanting, hoping for even a little more understanding about His plan for us and the provision He has made this book was/is (for me) amazing. C.S. Lewis was a wise man and close to God, and he left us an abundance of that wisdom (from God)in his writings. Highest recommendation.