Science Fiction & Fantasy Book

Lilith Review

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Even according to my usually odd tastes, Lilith is a strange read, certainly stranger and more surreal than the works of C.S. Lewis, who was greatly inspired by MacDonald. The beginning has a standard fantasy feel. The hero, Mr. Vane, is seeing to his estate. One day in the library he sees a strange apparition. Curious, he follows the spirit of the enigmatic Mr. Raven and finds himself led into a fantastical otherworld. From there the narrative becomes decidedly bizarre. Reading Lilith is like peering into a dream as Vane encounters a steady procession of inexplicable situations and grotesque images. In fact, MacDonald packs the book with so many symbols and lessons that the narrative structure tends to break down a little, and I found the story dragged quite a bit in the middle. This and MacDonald's sometimes awkward attempts at exposition made finishing the book questionable for me for a large portion of the story.

Yet I persisted... and I'm glad I did! I find it a little difficult to say why I liked Lilith. MacDonald was writing for Christian readers, and I am not one of them. I wanted to read it because of my general interest in religious imagery in fantasy and a more specific interest in the odd ways that particular mythological character has been reinvented and reinterpreted by different people. I certainly do not embrace all of MacDonald's moral ideologies fully, and some I find vaguely distasteful. Even so, I was enthralled with the images MacDonald chose to describe Vane's spiritual journey. I was intrigued when Mr. Raven subjects Vane to a Zen-like line of questioning at the beginning of the novel. I found the description of Vane's redemption and rebirth deeply moving and beautiful. Perhaps this is just my Christian upbringing showing through, but I like to think it also speaks to the relatedness of all spiritual seeking, and to the deeps well of myth and imagination from which MacDonald drew.

Lilith Overview

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"Lilith is equal if not superior to the best of Poe," the great 20th-century poet W.H. Auden said of this novel, but the comparison only begins to touch on the richness, density, and wonder of this late 19th-century adult fantasy novel. First published in 1895 (inhabiting a universe with the early Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, and Oscar Wilde--not to mention Thomas Hardy), this is the story of the aptly named Mr. Vane, his magical house, and the journeys into another world into which it leads him.

Meeting up with one mystery after another, including Adam and Eve themselves, he slowly but surely explores the mystery of the human fall from grace, and of our redemption. Instructed into the ways of seeing the deeper realities of this world--seeing, in a sense, by the light of the spirit--the reader and Mr. Vane both sense that MacDonald writes from his own deep experience of radiance, from a bliss so profound that death's darkness itself is utterly eclipsed in its light. --Doug Thorpe

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