Rating: 
Summary: all kinds of creepy
Review: "A Severe Mercy" is a monotonous tale of a sick relationship which was, sadly, never fully healed even after the author's conversion and his wife's death.The author is an overly self-conscious, controlling, self-absorbed snob (who can stomach Americans affecting British spelling?) whose characterization of his "beloved" remains disturbingly two-dimensional. If only she'd left her own story (well, one Van didn't burn), there might have been something interesting to it. People who love this book, in my experience, tend to love it for all the wrong reasons. They are, for example, swept away by the ideal of pagan love and miss the explicit point (which even the author, in theory at least, gets) that such love must either convert and grow or fester. Others are emotionally immature, somewhat naive and inexperienced in love, and miss all the glaring problems in the author's relationship and attitudes toward it (both at its beginning and later, as he looks back). Many of my friends who liked this book as teenagers found it repulsive when they read it as adults. (And the theologically inclined found a few theological errors to boot.) The book does have some redeeming features, like a handful of letters from C.S. Lewis to the author, but overall, it isn't worthwhile. There are too many good Christian books to be wasting time on this one.
Rating: 
Summary: A book that describes the Beauty and pain of Love
Review: A beautiful journey described here, a journey of love and Love, of strength and Mercy, a true heart story and heart-melting with it's pure Beauty and pain, too - I dont have the words to recommend this book enough. There is a world of learning here that opens up and that holds Truth and real 'meaning', an account of Love pure, dearly tender and real - and of the capacity to love. This sharing of this profoundly personal almost indescribable journey is a real gift that no one should turn away from.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent book on relationships, love, and friendship
Review: A biography including letters of C.S.Lewis
Rating:
Summary: A masterful story of love, beauty and spiritual insight
Review: A Severe Mercy is a masterfully crafted autobiography and the story of an intensely deep love relationship, a profound introspective on their path to finding God, and the utimate bereavement the author experiences as his thirty-something wife dies of a terminal illness. Along the way, their paths cross with C.S. Lewis; personal correspondence with him peppers the book, as does a collection of superb poems written by Vanauken. It explores complex theological, philosophical and aesthetic issues with deep insight and profoundly sharp perspective. I can't recommend it highly enough, it's truly one if the best books I've ever read - a work of art which crosses many dimensions. Practically speaking, A Severe Mercy explores a number of crucial life issues with breathtaking clarity. First, the second chapter, "The Shining Barrier" distills more insight into the true workings of a wonderful marriage relationship than a dozen garden-variety relationship books from the self-help section of a bookstore. Anyone who wants to understand why their romance has cooled off after five or ten or twenty years of marriage (including myself) could use this chapter alone as a manual for re-kindling the fire. Secondly, it explores the nature of a difficult spiritual journey in a most articulate way - the emotional, philosophical, theological and personal implications of the claims of Jesus Christ. This book is not in any way a Bible-thumping promo for Christianity; rather it examines the claims of Christ and their implications from logical, historical, aesthetic and personal viewpoints -- in a way that no thinking person can easily dismiss. I gave this book to friends of mine, a highly educated married professional couple, before they went on a camping trip. They were struggling mightily to reconcile Christianity with their modern worldview and the book was instrumental in helping them accomplish a breakthrough. Third, it delves into the difficult interior world of a person who is bereft of the love of his life and who must feel the sorrow and loss and yet go on. A Severe Mercy plumbs the depths of all of these issues via beautiful prose, expertly crafted perspective, and provocative poetry. Highly recommended.
Rating:
Summary: A Book that Chronicles the Honest Struggles of Life and Fait
Review: A Severe Mercy provides it all. VanAuken's real life story of falling in love, struggling through the realities of life and love and the "whys" are all woven together in a very readable style that chronicles the search of a couple for truth with a passion for life. The author artfully presents the journey that he and his wife Jean (Davy) take in wanting a great love and intellectual honesty. Their desire to study the claims of the Christian faith brings them into contact with C.S. Lewis at Oxford who, through friendship and correspondence assists them in coming to a personal faith followed by the struggles of implementing that faith in the difficulty of grief. He labels God's role in VanAuken's pilgrimage as a "severe mercy." A great book for those desiring a love story, those addressing personal grief or those seeking honest answers in their faith.
Rating:
Summary: Sentimental, yet Truthful
Review: A story about love, the shining barrier, between a pre-WWII American couple that leads to a life of deep living and true struggle with what life and relationship bring to each other. CS Lewis, God, and intellectualism all mix in a very well thought out and true to life way that make this a most timely and peculiarly important book. Three big events: the love of a couple, their conversion to Christ, and death all mix with how God must be faced in our lives. Touching, sentimental, yet truthful to the greater truths of what it really means to be a follower of Christ.
Rating:
Summary: A severely merciful God saves author from idolotary.
Review: After putting it off for several years, I finally read A Severe Mercy, between Maunday Thursday and Easter Sunday, 1999. With Christ's Passion, Death, and Resurrection as the background, along with my wife's yearning to leave our Lutheran exile and join the Roman Catholic Church, I cried my way through the book, simply unable to restrain tears of hurt, joy, compassion, sorrow, and very strong empathy. These tears were also shed in the context of Little Lost Marion, Vanauken's story of finding the child Davy had at age 14, and which she put up for adoption, not aborting. Sheldon and Davy never had children, a pre Christian decision a Christian Vanauken came to regret. Then it hit me. The power of the book doesn't lie primarily in the story of grief and lost love, as poignant and beautiful as it is. Rather, if we stop with Sheldon and Davy's love for each other, we will miss Vanauken's major point: Davy's death as God's "severe mercy" to keep Sheldon in God's love. Davy's death allowed God to destroy the 'shining barrier" of their love, kill that idol, and reclaim Vanauken for himself. Mercy, indeed, if you can handle it, and Vanauken, in God's grace did. Perfect Lenten and Holy Week reading! But also a perfect book to help Christians understand the lengths to which God will go to keep his children and to see that in the great hurts and disappointments of life, God's severe mercy is frequently at work.
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Summary: love is stronger than death...
Review: After several readings of this book over the past few years, I can conclude without any hesitation that it is the most moving and unforgettable memoir I've ever read. It is relevant to note that all 29 of the other ... reviewers (at the time of my own writing) rate it a solid 5 stars... it really deserves a sixth. Not only for it's amazing true content, but for the beautiful way in which the author lays it all out. This book will literally captivate your imagination, sweep you away, and tug you towards a deeper understanding of the depths of "inloveness" (a Vanauken term) possible in God-ordained marriage. Sheldon and Jean Vanauken were living the dream of togetherness that most people only.... well, DREAM about... until they came face to face with the fact that perhaps "perpetual springtime is not allowed." Those words were from their personal friend, the Oxford don C.S. Lewis and addressed to Sheldon as he tried to make sense of his overwhelming grief. This is the story of a profound love between two people... a love that has its genesis, consummation, and terminus in heavenly places. If your eyes are dry all the way through this book... well, never mind... they won't be.
Rating:
Summary: The most romantic story I have ever read
Review: All of the other reviewers have already explained why this is such a fantastic book, so I'm sure I don't have anything new to add. I admit the story was a little hard to get into and seemed so melodramatic at first. But the more I read the book, the more I began to understand and respect the love that they had for each other. Vanauken's description of God's "severe mercy" is so beautiful. The chapters where he begins to understand Davy's death are heart-wrenching. Just when you are in love with their love, he reveals something deeper and sweeter. It's a wonderful love story.
Rating:
Summary: A Severe Mercy
Review: As I have told many church groups over the years this is my 2nd favorite book next to the Bible.
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