Lenten Lands: My Childhood with Joy Davidman and C.S. Lewis

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Summary: An honest recollection, full of angst and grief. . .
Review: . . .written by one of Joy Davidman's sons (and CS Lewis's stepson).

This is not a book primarily about CS Lewis. It is not a book primarily about Joy Davidman. Those who pick up this volume looking for a "biography" will be disappointed. Rather, the book is a painful exploration of the trials and tribulations of a young man faced with:

1) abuse by a violent father (whom he still loved)

2) the controversial marriage of his mother to a prominent public figure (whom he also loved, despite a sometimes difficult relationship)

3) the illness and death of his mother (1960)

4) the illness and death of his stepfather (1963)

5) the illness and suicide of his father (1964)

6) the normal "angst" of the growing-up years.

Considered from this perspective, I suspect that the book was a form of catharsis for Douglas; a sort of "coming-to-grips" with years of pain and uncertainty.

This sort of "from the heart" revealatory book will NOT suit all tastes (as is evident from the tenor of some of the other reviews). But taken for what it is, the book provides valuable insight into the Lewis "family".

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Summary: Douglas Gresham's autobiography
Review: Lenten Lands is the autobiography of Douglas Gresham. He was the stepson of C. S. Lewis, the famous writer of many books on Christianity and childrens' fantasies.

Gresham was eight years old when his mother divorced her first husband in America and took him and his brother to live in England. Mrs. Joy Gresham was an intellectual and a writer, and had begun a friendship with C. S. Lewis. The friendship gradually deepened, and in time Joy and "Jack" Lewis were married. Their home was the picturesque cottage called "The Kilns" in Oxford, which was also occupied by Lewis' brother, Warnie.

Gresham's mother suffered for years with cancer and died when Douglas was fifteen. Lewis was completely devastated by her death, and died three years later, following a lengthy illness. Warnie Lewis died, an alcoholic, ten years later. By this time, Gresham was happily married, had four children, and was a farmer in Australia.

The problem I have with this book is that Douglas Gresham is certainly not famous enough in his own right to warrant writing an autobiography. He came to love C. S. Lewis in the ten years he knew him, but spent the entire time away at various boarding schools, only going home on summer vacations. This explains why his descriptions of life with Lewis are told in vague, general terms; he never spent enough time with him to know him well. We learn nothing of the famous man at all. Indeed, the thing that is described best and in the most detail, is Lewis' home, the Kilns. It is described as an exquisitely beautiful fairyland with a lake and woods, made for a little boy's adventures. He writes of the numbing sadness he felt at the deaths of his mother, Jack, and Warnie; however, he was not there when any of them died and, and has only hazy memories of those events. The biggest mystery about this book is that he only mentions the existence of his brother a handful of times. He never says what the relationship between his brother, mother, and Jack was, how the deaths affected his brother, how he did at school, or what he did afterward. (The only answer I can come up with is that the brother must have asked to be left out of the book, as he was from the movie "Shadowlands.")

The subtitle of this book is "My childhood with Joy Davidman and C. S. Lewis," and yet he talks very little about them. The subject of the book is clearly Douglas Gresham, who had a very ordinary childhood. The review on the book cover says it is the "story of one of the most tender love stories of the mid-century," and yet Gresham gives no specific events or examples of this love. He talks about them in the most superficial terms, for, in fact, he was a little boy and he wasn't around them much.

The book should have ended with Jack's death, for surely Gresham is only known because of his association with Lewis. Those fans of C. S. Lewis hoping to gain insight into the man will be disappointed. The book is about Gresham's childhood, which was mostly spent apart from Lewis and, unfortunately, did not merit an autobiography.

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Summary: A decade with C.S. Lewis, up close and personal.
Review: No true die-hard student of C.S. Lewis can pass on a reading of this book, and here's why:
Lenten Lands provides a perspective of Lewis that you can get nowhere else... the perspective of a stepson.
There are many books about Lewis the academician, Lewis the lay-theologian... Lewis the prolific author/poet... but a first-hand account of Lewis the around-the-house stepdad? Trust me, you will find THAT nowhere but here!
And it's an important perspective, this day-to-day life at the Kilns in Oxford, because many misconceptions about Lewis are cleared up in the midst of Douglas Gresham's recollections.
As other reviewers have noted, this is technically a biography of Douglas Gresham rather than of C.S. Lewis. The opening chapters are of the Gresham family in Staatsburg, New York. Then, in 1953, as a child, Douglas met Lewis for the first time in Oxford. By this time, Joy Davidman (Douglas' mother) was already acquainted with Lewis. Three years later (1956) the two were married in the Registry Office, but not before Joy's illness was already fairly advanced. The following year (1957) their vows are re-instated by the Rev. Peter Bide in Wingfield-Morris Hospital. Three years later Joy dies from cancer.
Then, three years after this, on a somber November evening while eighteen-year-old Douglas is still digesting the fact that President Kennedy has just been assassinated, he receives the news that Lewis has died.
"On that day... there was a bitter stillness about the world; for the second time in my life everything I knew, everything I held dear and the one person I loved had been swept away." I found this portion of the book to be especially moving.
The following year (1964) Douglas' birth father commits suicide.
A few final chapters tell of Douglas' own marriage and settlings in Tasmania and mainland Australia.
But the bulk of Lenten Lands consists of Douglas' decade of knowing C.S. Lewis. A very well-written book, the title being borrowed from a phrase in Joy's epitaph, written by Lewis.
As I read Lenten Lands I was reminded of something C.S. Lewis said long before ever knowing the Greshams. In his "Abolition of Man" (published 1943) he said "I myself do not enjoy the society of small children... I recognize this as a defect in myself."
Again, in a private letter to his friend Arthur Greeves (December 1935) Lewis commented "I theoretically hold that one ought to like children, but I am shy with them in practice."
Yet Douglas concludes that his decade of knowing Lewis was a "privilege"... "a gift of education and experience greater than some of us gain in a lifetime."
His statement confirms my own suspicion about Lewis... that he was a man of such inner greatness, that he proved to be good even at the things he was not good at.

Rating:
Summary: A charming story.
Review: Unlike some reviewers, I found Lenten Lands well-written, poignant, and honest, though it dies a bit towards the end. (As auto-biographies often do -- if the author doesn't die first, like Moses.) I am not sure why some reviewers complain that Douglas chose to tell his story, even if his memories of Lewis were not as full, say, as George Sayers, and he has lived a fairly simple, even blue-color, life at times. Greshem's descriptions of growing up, the houses he lived in, taking the boat to England, London and Oxford, and the Kilns, were all interesting to me, though as a fan of Lewis I was of course anticipating scenes of his life. Greshem brings nature, his feelings, the drama of watching his mother come to love C. S. Lewis and the love returned, then her death, to life. The scene in which his dying but still fiercely defensive mother confronts a trespasser with a shotgun, C. S. Lewis standing alarmed at her side, and yells, "Get out of my line of fire, Jack!", and the scenes that follow, made me laugh for a fair chunk of an hour.

I didn't expect this book to all be about Lewis; hasn't he had enough pure biographies already? I was pleased to learn much more about Joy, whom Douglas and "Jack" both greatly loved. (Having read her Smoke on the Mountain, I agree she had talent and insight -- though Douglas' claim that she was an intellectual match for Lewis should be described as filial, I think.) Lenten Lands seemed to me an honest and thoughtful story, and I found myself reading it very quickly.