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A review by helena_blythe
Descent into Hell by Charles Williams
5.0
I may never have read this on my own, but I am so glad that it was a part of my assigned college reading.
It reads best when one is familiar with Dante, but I think a general knowledge would suffice. Charles Williams anchors this book in a concept called "co-inherence" -- that what happens to one, affects all. All individuals are part of an interconnected whole, and exist in relationship to each other. Williams balances (or tries to) this rather Eastern concept in a deep and mystical Catholicism. (The mystical conception of the fully God, fully man Christ in the fully human, sin natured Mary being the most complete illustration of this co-inherence.) The structure of the novel is unique, with the major characters existing as foils to each other -- as one slips into self-determined damnation, another reaches out for salvation.
I feel that I could read this book a dozen times and still get something fresh from it each time.
It reads best when one is familiar with Dante, but I think a general knowledge would suffice. Charles Williams anchors this book in a concept called "co-inherence" -- that what happens to one, affects all. All individuals are part of an interconnected whole, and exist in relationship to each other. Williams balances (or tries to) this rather Eastern concept in a deep and mystical Catholicism. (The mystical conception of the fully God, fully man Christ in the fully human, sin natured Mary being the most complete illustration of this co-inherence.) The structure of the novel is unique, with the major characters existing as foils to each other -- as one slips into self-determined damnation, another reaches out for salvation.
I feel that I could read this book a dozen times and still get something fresh from it each time.