I hesitate to describe the plot too much lest I include spoilers. In short, this is a version of the myth of Psyche as told by the sister who raised her. There is much darkness, but at the very end a beautiful light appears. Well worth the read! Perhaps especially in dark times.
Quotations:
“It burned me from within. It quickened; I was with book, as a woman is with child” (p. 247).
“The change which the writing wrought in me (and of which I did not write) was only a beginning—only to prepare me for the gods’ surgery. They used my own pen to probe my wound” (pp. 253-254).
“Lightly men talk of saying what they mean. Often when he was teaching me to write in Greek the Fox would say, ‘Child, to say the very thing you really mean, the whole of it, nothing more or less or other than what you really mean; that’s the whole art and joy of words.’ A glib saying. When the time comes to you at which you will be forced at last to utter the speech which has lain at the center of your soul for years, which you have, all that time, idiot-like, been saying over and over, you’ll not talk about joy of words. I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?” (p. 294).
This was such a different book than I remembered. Funny how that can be. Still, what quotations on words and writing!
When I find such neat quotations, I’ll try to share them here. Feel free to send me those you find too. If you’ll email me via my contact page, I’ll post them for all to enjoy, but you can also just randomly comment with them. I daresay my readers will understand. 🙂
Always love gaining new wisdom from the pen of C.S. Lewis!