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sorinahiggins's review against another edition
5.0
Here is my summary of this book! https://theoddestinkling.wordpress.com/2015/01/14/the-place-of-the-lion/.
kidclamp's review against another edition
challenging
inspiring
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? It's complicated
- Diverse cast of characters? No
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.5
Philosophy disguised as novel? It was entertaining and compelling as plot in ways, but it was also a drone of beliefs. Had I been more compelled by the vision, it would have been more fascinating. I imagine there are those stuck by this, but I want quite. Similar to Hesse.
leesmyth's review against another edition
4.0
There are many excellent passages - some very funny, wry, or insightful - but for me, the overall effect was somewhat less than the sum of its parts.
lbcaterson's review against another edition
5.0
Read this one slowly, or you'll miss some interesting and thought provoking details.
This reads somewhat like a modern day horror movie script at times, but yet is set in bucolic England. The way the real and the supernatural dance into each other is absolutely fascinating and wonderful.
This reads somewhat like a modern day horror movie script at times, but yet is set in bucolic England. The way the real and the supernatural dance into each other is absolutely fascinating and wonderful.
allisonjpmiller's review against another edition
3.0
A co-worker lent me this book upon hearing I was a Lewis fan, and I find myself flummoxed. I won't say it was the easiest or most pleasant read, but boy was it intense. The prose is so dense with ideas that it takes quite a bit of navigation to follow Williams' train of thought - and even then, I wasn't sure I grasped his full meaning. But then, the story itself is about how little we grasp of the world around us (and behind us, and in us). I will be seeking out Williams' other novels soon - I can't stop here. He is far too intriguing.
daniell's review against another edition
3.0
Literature can be considered good on any of about four counts: general beauty of language (often found in brevity), character, story, and excursiveness (often found in expansive, sometimes philosophical meanderings). The Place of the Lion excels at excursiveness, stinks at character, and passes on the other two counts. Here's a great excursion from the text:
"His friend. The many moments of joy and deep content which their room had held had in them something of the nature of holy innocence. There had been something in them which was imparted, by Love to love, and which had willed to save them now. Much was possible to a man in solitude; perhaps the final transmutations and achievements in the zones on the yonder side of the central Knowledge were possible only to the spirit in solitude. But some things were possible only to a man in companionship, and of these t he most important was balance. No mind was so good that it did not need another mind to counter and equal it, and to save it from conceit and blindness and bigotry and folly. Only in such a balance could humility be found, humility which was a lucid speed to welcome lucidity whenever and wherever it presented itself. How much he owed to Quentin! how much--not pride but delight urged the admission--Quentin owed to him! Balance--and movement in balance, as an eagle sails up on the wind--this was the truth of life, and beauty in life" (164).
You'll notice that this is not a dialogue and not something that advances relations between characters. It's a paean for friendship. There's absolutely nothing wrong with this and it's even quite profound, and I quote it only to say that passages like that are what make the book worthwhile.
Here's another example a few pages later:
"He was lying back, very still, in his chair. His desire went inwards, through a universe of peace, and hovered, as if on aquiline pinions, over the moment when man knew and named the powers of which he was made. Vast landscapes opened beneath him; laughter rang up towards him. Among the forests he saw a great glade, and in the glade wandered a solitary lamb. It was alone--for a moment or for many years; and then from the trees there came forth a human figure and stood also in the sun. With its appearance a mighty movement everywhere began. A morning of Light was on the earth; the hippopotamus lumbered from the river, the boar charged from the forest, the great apes swung down to the ground before a figure of strength and beauty, the young and glorious archetype of humanity. A voice, crying out in song, went through the air of Eden,--a voice that swept up as the eagle, and with every call renewed its youth. All music was the scattered echo of that voice; all poetry was the approach of the fallen understanding to that unfallen meaning. All things were named--all but man himself, then the sleep fell upon the Adam, and in that first sleep he strove to utter his name, and as he strove he was divided and woke to find humanity doubled. The name of mankind was in neither voice but in both; the knowledge of the name and its utterance was in the perpetual interchange of love. Whoever denied that austere godhead, wherever and however it appeared--its presence, its austerity, its divinity--refused the name of man" (166).
It's passages like that which are wonderful for their philosophical descriptions, less so for their novelistic qualities, which is only to say that Williams generally blurs the line between those kinds of writing and certainly does so here.
The dark side of excursive writing is excessive use of adverbs and adjectives. This happened in some places where I think the writing could have been tighter, but that's a minor gripe. Here's one example that precedes a dialogue, but is also an example of description without experience--narrative out of the context of the characters' perception:
"Bewildered and distracted, Anthony caught his companion's arm. Mr. Tighe was by now almost hanging to the gate, his hands clutching frenziedly to the topmost bar, his jaws working. Noises were coming from his mouth; the sweat stood in the creases of his face. He gobbled at the soft-glowing vision; he uttered little cries and pressed himself against the bars; his knees were wedged between them, and his feet drawn from the ground in the intensity of his apprehension. And over him faster and thicker the great incursion passed, and the air over the garden was filled with butterflies, streaming, rising, sinking, hovering, towards their centre, and farther now than Anthony's eyes could see the single host of all that visitation rose and fell, only whenever he saw it towards the ground, it turned upwards in a solitary magnificence and whenever, having risen, it dropped again, it went encircled by innumerable tiny bodies and wings.
Credulous, breathless, he gazed, until after times unreckoned had passed, there seemed to be a stay. Lesser grew the clouds above; smaller the flights that joined them. Now there were but a score and now but twelve or ten--now only three tardy dancers waited above for the flight of their vision; and as again it rose, but one--coming faster than all the rest, reaching its strange assignation as it were at the last permitted moment, joining its summoning lord as it rose for the last time, and falling with it; and then the great butterfly of the garden floated idly in the empty air, and the whole army of others had altogether vanished from sight, and from knowledge. It also after a short while rose, curvetting, passed upwards towards the roof of the house, settled there for a moment, a glowing splendour upon the red tiles, swept beyond it, and disappeared. Anthony moved and blinked, took a step or two away, looked round him, blinked again, and turned back to Mr. Tighe. He was about to speak, but, seeing the other man's face, he paused abruptly. The tears were running down it; as his hands released the bars Anthony saw that he was trembling all over; he stumbled and could not get his footing upon the road. Anthony caught and steadied him."
That Anthony saw something, or that Tighe reacted a certain way seem incidental to what Williams is trying to accomplish in describing the great unexpected fantastic incursion of butterflies seen here. It's not as though there are no characters, it's just that they seem to take a back seat to how Williams writes the scene.
Williams is an Inkling, and like Lewis's space trilogy TPotL is best categorized as a thought experiment or philosophical exploration. That's not to say that human experience is ignored here, but that this book is really about relationships between ideas. This is not a bad thing, and I think that what Williams intended. Case in point, one of the main characters (Damaris) is called to give a stand-in lecture on Plato.
"She stood up and paused. 'By the way,' she asked, 'what's your paper called?'
'The Eidola and the Angeli,' Damaris answered. 'It's just a comparison, you know; largely between the sub-Platonic philosophers on the one side and the commentators on Dionysius the Areopagite on the other, suggesting that they have a common pattern in mind. But some of the quotations are rather quaint and might attract your friends.'"
During the middle of the lecture one of the attendants goes hysterical and claims to see a snake on the floor, at which point the lecture ends. Postulating ends when the spirits incur. This theme is developed in a discussion between Anthony and Mr. Foster (AKA Charles Williams writing himself into the story):
"
Anthony's raised hand stopped him. 'The world of principles?'
'He believes-and I believe it too," Mr. Foster said, "that this world is created, and all men and women are created, by the entrance of certain great principles into aboriginal matter. We call them by cold names; wisdom and courage and beauty and strength and so on, but actually they are very great and mighty Powers. It may be they are the angels and archangels of which the Christian Church talks--and Miss Damaris Tighe--I do not know. And when That which is behind them intends to put a new soul into matter it disposes them as it will, and by a peculiar mingling of them a child is born; and this is their concern with us, but what is their concern and business among themselves we cannot know. And by this gentle introduction of them, every time in a new and just proportion, mankind is maintained. In the animals they are less mingled, for there each is shown to us in his own becoming shape; those Powers are the archetypes of the beasts, and very much more, but we need not talk of that. Now this world in which they exist is truly a real world, and to see it is a very difficult and dangerous thing, but our master held that it could be done, and that the man was very wise who would consecrate himself to this end as part--and the chief part--of his duty on earth. He did this, and I, as much as I can, have done it.'
"
Williams wrestled with the proper place of spirits in the world and this book is part of that journey. Lewis writes in A Grief Observed about his own temptation to the Occult and Williams sympathized with the impulse toward this power. The way Williams works this out is interesting in theory, and development into the reality of his characters' experience is the rough point of the book. Nevertheless there is some sense of an arc, just not as much as I would have liked to see.
"His friend. The many moments of joy and deep content which their room had held had in them something of the nature of holy innocence. There had been something in them which was imparted, by Love to love, and which had willed to save them now. Much was possible to a man in solitude; perhaps the final transmutations and achievements in the zones on the yonder side of the central Knowledge were possible only to the spirit in solitude. But some things were possible only to a man in companionship, and of these t he most important was balance. No mind was so good that it did not need another mind to counter and equal it, and to save it from conceit and blindness and bigotry and folly. Only in such a balance could humility be found, humility which was a lucid speed to welcome lucidity whenever and wherever it presented itself. How much he owed to Quentin! how much--not pride but delight urged the admission--Quentin owed to him! Balance--and movement in balance, as an eagle sails up on the wind--this was the truth of life, and beauty in life" (164).
You'll notice that this is not a dialogue and not something that advances relations between characters. It's a paean for friendship. There's absolutely nothing wrong with this and it's even quite profound, and I quote it only to say that passages like that are what make the book worthwhile.
Here's another example a few pages later:
"He was lying back, very still, in his chair. His desire went inwards, through a universe of peace, and hovered, as if on aquiline pinions, over the moment when man knew and named the powers of which he was made. Vast landscapes opened beneath him; laughter rang up towards him. Among the forests he saw a great glade, and in the glade wandered a solitary lamb. It was alone--for a moment or for many years; and then from the trees there came forth a human figure and stood also in the sun. With its appearance a mighty movement everywhere began. A morning of Light was on the earth; the hippopotamus lumbered from the river, the boar charged from the forest, the great apes swung down to the ground before a figure of strength and beauty, the young and glorious archetype of humanity. A voice, crying out in song, went through the air of Eden,--a voice that swept up as the eagle, and with every call renewed its youth. All music was the scattered echo of that voice; all poetry was the approach of the fallen understanding to that unfallen meaning. All things were named--all but man himself, then the sleep fell upon the Adam, and in that first sleep he strove to utter his name, and as he strove he was divided and woke to find humanity doubled. The name of mankind was in neither voice but in both; the knowledge of the name and its utterance was in the perpetual interchange of love. Whoever denied that austere godhead, wherever and however it appeared--its presence, its austerity, its divinity--refused the name of man" (166).
It's passages like that which are wonderful for their philosophical descriptions, less so for their novelistic qualities, which is only to say that Williams generally blurs the line between those kinds of writing and certainly does so here.
The dark side of excursive writing is excessive use of adverbs and adjectives. This happened in some places where I think the writing could have been tighter, but that's a minor gripe. Here's one example that precedes a dialogue, but is also an example of description without experience--narrative out of the context of the characters' perception:
"Bewildered and distracted, Anthony caught his companion's arm. Mr. Tighe was by now almost hanging to the gate, his hands clutching frenziedly to the topmost bar, his jaws working. Noises were coming from his mouth; the sweat stood in the creases of his face. He gobbled at the soft-glowing vision; he uttered little cries and pressed himself against the bars; his knees were wedged between them, and his feet drawn from the ground in the intensity of his apprehension. And over him faster and thicker the great incursion passed, and the air over the garden was filled with butterflies, streaming, rising, sinking, hovering, towards their centre, and farther now than Anthony's eyes could see the single host of all that visitation rose and fell, only whenever he saw it towards the ground, it turned upwards in a solitary magnificence and whenever, having risen, it dropped again, it went encircled by innumerable tiny bodies and wings.
Credulous, breathless, he gazed, until after times unreckoned had passed, there seemed to be a stay. Lesser grew the clouds above; smaller the flights that joined them. Now there were but a score and now but twelve or ten--now only three tardy dancers waited above for the flight of their vision; and as again it rose, but one--coming faster than all the rest, reaching its strange assignation as it were at the last permitted moment, joining its summoning lord as it rose for the last time, and falling with it; and then the great butterfly of the garden floated idly in the empty air, and the whole army of others had altogether vanished from sight, and from knowledge. It also after a short while rose, curvetting, passed upwards towards the roof of the house, settled there for a moment, a glowing splendour upon the red tiles, swept beyond it, and disappeared. Anthony moved and blinked, took a step or two away, looked round him, blinked again, and turned back to Mr. Tighe. He was about to speak, but, seeing the other man's face, he paused abruptly. The tears were running down it; as his hands released the bars Anthony saw that he was trembling all over; he stumbled and could not get his footing upon the road. Anthony caught and steadied him."
That Anthony saw something, or that Tighe reacted a certain way seem incidental to what Williams is trying to accomplish in describing the great unexpected fantastic incursion of butterflies seen here. It's not as though there are no characters, it's just that they seem to take a back seat to how Williams writes the scene.
Williams is an Inkling, and like Lewis's space trilogy TPotL is best categorized as a thought experiment or philosophical exploration. That's not to say that human experience is ignored here, but that this book is really about relationships between ideas. This is not a bad thing, and I think that what Williams intended. Case in point, one of the main characters (Damaris) is called to give a stand-in lecture on Plato.
"She stood up and paused. 'By the way,' she asked, 'what's your paper called?'
'The Eidola and the Angeli,' Damaris answered. 'It's just a comparison, you know; largely between the sub-Platonic philosophers on the one side and the commentators on Dionysius the Areopagite on the other, suggesting that they have a common pattern in mind. But some of the quotations are rather quaint and might attract your friends.'"
During the middle of the lecture one of the attendants goes hysterical and claims to see a snake on the floor, at which point the lecture ends. Postulating ends when the spirits incur. This theme is developed in a discussion between Anthony and Mr. Foster (AKA Charles Williams writing himself into the story):
"
Anthony's raised hand stopped him. 'The world of principles?'
'He believes-and I believe it too," Mr. Foster said, "that this world is created, and all men and women are created, by the entrance of certain great principles into aboriginal matter. We call them by cold names; wisdom and courage and beauty and strength and so on, but actually they are very great and mighty Powers. It may be they are the angels and archangels of which the Christian Church talks--and Miss Damaris Tighe--I do not know. And when That which is behind them intends to put a new soul into matter it disposes them as it will, and by a peculiar mingling of them a child is born; and this is their concern with us, but what is their concern and business among themselves we cannot know. And by this gentle introduction of them, every time in a new and just proportion, mankind is maintained. In the animals they are less mingled, for there each is shown to us in his own becoming shape; those Powers are the archetypes of the beasts, and very much more, but we need not talk of that. Now this world in which they exist is truly a real world, and to see it is a very difficult and dangerous thing, but our master held that it could be done, and that the man was very wise who would consecrate himself to this end as part--and the chief part--of his duty on earth. He did this, and I, as much as I can, have done it.'
"
Williams wrestled with the proper place of spirits in the world and this book is part of that journey. Lewis writes in A Grief Observed about his own temptation to the Occult and Williams sympathized with the impulse toward this power. The way Williams works this out is interesting in theory, and development into the reality of his characters' experience is the rough point of the book. Nevertheless there is some sense of an arc, just not as much as I would have liked to see.
thebeardedpoet's review against another edition
5.0
Admittedly I like strange stories, dream-like and even nightmare-like stories. I am not troubled when the phenomenon which causes all the trouble is inexplicable by rational argument. So this book was right up my alley. Another thing which helped this book is I've recently completed a course in church history which covered the bio and core ideas of Peter Abelard, among others. This book reminded me most of C.S. Lewis's Space Trilogy. Since I already know that C.S. Lewis read and admired The Place of the Lion (as did T.S. Eliot), I have no doubt that William's work influenced Lewis's. Both feature powerful beings, strange supernatural manifestations, Christian themes dealt with in concreate events, and characters who are pressed and challenged to uphold heroic ideals. I loved how one of the characters in The Place of Lion went from being my least favorite character to my favorite character because she had an awakening which cleared away her self-centered obsessions. Yes, there were passages which lost me--usually when Alexander was thinking through ideas and abstractions, trying to make sense of what was going on. Despite those moments when I lost the thread, there was just enough love poured into the characters and their plight for me to deeply care. The last three chapters especially moved me as they demonstrated self-sacrifice, the eternal value of friendship, and authentic love. To me this is the kind of book I get the most excited about where fantastic things happen and I actually care about the imaginary people who are struggling.
nayathedragonslaya's review against another edition
adventurous
emotional
funny
mysterious
reflective
tense
medium-paced
3.75
pnw_michelle's review against another edition
3.0
First off I have to admit I was very irritated by the self-satisfied Christian white maleness of the main character and the narration. Which I should have realized, going in ... I haven't read any Charles Williams since college when white Christian maleness was the default setting for most of what I was reading. It seems I have far less patience for that sort of thing these days!
Still. Williams WAS brilliant, and the premise of the novel is intriguing, and it's certainly a good mental stretch to read it. If you don't get twitchy reading in a setting where sexism, racism and religious superiority are sort of ingrained in the culture, this is a fascinating read.
Still. Williams WAS brilliant, and the premise of the novel is intriguing, and it's certainly a good mental stretch to read it. If you don't get twitchy reading in a setting where sexism, racism and religious superiority are sort of ingrained in the culture, this is a fascinating read.
bzzzzzz's review against another edition
adventurous
challenging
mysterious
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? It's complicated
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.75
Excellent.