Trust & Obey

Back when I was in my early teens, I had an adoration of Greek mythology. The characters, the stories, and even some history just made the whole topic fascinating to me. I had an enormous picture book filled with Greek Mythology that I read over and over. By the time I was thirteen, I could tell you about any Greek myth out there. There were a few myths I didn’t know. The story of Cupid and Psyche was one of them.

Since my love for Greek (or Roman in this case) mythology still remains alive, I immediately purchased this book on Amazon and delightfully awaited its arrival. The other element that pulled me in was the author was none other than C.S. Lewis. I have not read a book by him I disliked so I felt confident in this one. My confidence in his literary skills was not let down!

To give you a brief synopsis on the myth that made Till We Have Faces, this is the retelling of the love between Psyche and Cupid. Psyche was the youngest of three daughters of a king. She was worshiped by everyone and even preferred over Venus, which made Venus envious. She’s the goddess of love and beauty so everyone should love her, not some mortal. To try to fix the situation Venus sent Cupid out to make Psyche only fall for pathetic men, tarnishing her image. Unfortunately for Venus, when Cupid saw Psyche he fell in love with her. He made a palace for her and told her he would visit her every night but Psyche could not see his face. Psyche’s sisters tell her that she must find out who her lover is and that proves to be a fatal mistake.

This retelling is delightful because it takes the perspective of Psyche’s older sister- Orual- along with her thoughts and emotions. We don’t fully understand what happening with Psyche but are experiencing it from the observer perspective with Orual. Being a person who didn’t know the story, it was much more a rollercoaster. I felt in the dark but could see the light come ever so slowly towards me revealing the true story. Orual is also deeply imbittered being the lesser sister. She is ugly and lacks value in her father’s eyes. So, Orual’s emotions play into her narrative of the story which twists it ever so slightly to make you think differently of Psyche.

Lewis claimed this was his best work and I would have to say I liked it immensely. The Screwtape Letters is most likely my favorite because of its wittiness and depth. Despite this, I found Till We Have Faces unique. It had Christian ideas embedded into the plot; not until the end do you get to know the parallels in this book with the Christian walk. That was something I really liked! I am used to the Christian beliefs being painfully obvious and with Till We Have Faces you have to search for it more. The search made me pay more attention and think deeply about the story and characters.

After all of this, you may wonder why I only gave this book four stars. The reasoning is simple, the English is older. That might sound funny, but in my head, the words didn’t glide off the pages. The words felt coarse because C.S. Lewis’ English is over fifty years old! It’s not about using large words (I use enormous words frequently) but the way in which he phrases things. This language style makes Till We Have Faces feel more stiff and formal to me, however, if I read it in the fifties I have no doubt it wouldn’t have been an issue. It’s an extremely trivial issue but nonetheless, it did make it more difficult to fall into the world.

Till We Have Faces was a beautiful work that doesn’t just draw in the Christian thinkers but the lovers of classics and ancient mythology. The tale of Cupid and Psyche and their love is interesting by itself but tie in the intellect of Lewis and you get a beautiful story of love, narrated by a woman who doesn’t know love.