Shades of grey
Jul. 22nd, 2010 09:28 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
mamagotchaThe concept of why people do evil things seems to have been popping up in my reading a lot lately: "Wicked" (Gregory McGuire's retelling of the Oz story, from the witch's point of view), "The Hour I First Believed" (Wally Lamb's novel about one family's fallout after Columbine), and just yesterday I finished "Till We Have Faces," C.S. Lewis' retelling of the story of Cupid and Psyche.
I'm currently working on articles about those graphic abortion trucks, and parents who smoke marijuana.
Looks like I've got a morality thing going these days, ya think?
Anyway... Lewis considered "Faces" to be one of his best books, and I agree, yet I'd never heard of it until I picked it up for free at a homeschooling swap a few months back. For some reason I thought it was going to be from the point of view of Psyche and maybe whiny victimy stuff, or else twisted into didactic Christian allegory, and so it languished in the to-read pile.
I needed something to pull me out of myself during a recent bout of nausea, and grabbed it off the shelf... a retelling of a Greek myth shouldn't be too heavy, right? Well... on the surface, no, it wasn't heavy at all. The pace was brisk and light, and the story accessible and beautifully told. But the story, told from Psyche's older sister's view, has a depth to it that is only hinted at by skimming over that pretty surface. I know I'll be reading it again, and it occurred to me to ask if anyone out there has read it (either once or several times).
Also... any other morality novels I should get my hands on?
I'm currently working on articles about those graphic abortion trucks, and parents who smoke marijuana.
Looks like I've got a morality thing going these days, ya think?
Anyway... Lewis considered "Faces" to be one of his best books, and I agree, yet I'd never heard of it until I picked it up for free at a homeschooling swap a few months back. For some reason I thought it was going to be from the point of view of Psyche and maybe whiny victimy stuff, or else twisted into didactic Christian allegory, and so it languished in the to-read pile.
I needed something to pull me out of myself during a recent bout of nausea, and grabbed it off the shelf... a retelling of a Greek myth shouldn't be too heavy, right? Well... on the surface, no, it wasn't heavy at all. The pace was brisk and light, and the story accessible and beautifully told. But the story, told from Psyche's older sister's view, has a depth to it that is only hinted at by skimming over that pretty surface. I know I'll be reading it again, and it occurred to me to ask if anyone out there has read it (either once or several times).
Also... any other morality novels I should get my hands on?