Book Review: Lilith by George MacDonald
Jan. 25th, 2013 12:06 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
juushikaTitle: Lilith
Author: George MacDonald
Published: Project Gutenberg, 2013; New York: Dod, Mead & Co., 1895
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 213
Total Page Count: 126,703
Text Number: 368
Read Because: fan of the author, e-book from Project Gutenberg
Review: Following a phantom, an average man is pulled into a strange world—one ephemeral and magical, where issues of salvation are not theoretical but are instead a literal battle and quest. Lilith is a direct allegory of Christian Universalist salvation, laid atop strange magics and stranger symbolism. Over landscapes effervescent and transcendent, shadowed and looming, the beginning of the book is more of a ramble than a journey; at his best MacDonald is deeply evocative, and while the book's internal mythos can be arbitrary it is just as often inspired and provoking. But as the book continues and develops direction, it sours. I love the compelling and flawed characters, but often felt as if I wasn't intended to: Lilith's desire for self-determination is sympathetic and inspiring, and then roundly condemned. The book's unique and delicate internal mythos is occasionally at conflict with and often trampled by the appearance of literal Christian figures and messages.
Lilith ends with the same beautiful imprecision with which it begins, which salvages some things. I admire MacDonald, and parts of this book are captivating; I even enjoy it thematically. But this is story made slave to allegory, and while it is somewhat too subtle to be preachy and works in bits and pieces—the fantastic landscape, the larger-than-life characters, the echoing of damnation and salvation in the threat and beauty of the setting—it crumbles as a whole. It pains me to rate this book relatively low, but it simply never clicked for me; I much prefer The Golden Key for its more delicate, less precise balance of the fantastic and symbolic, and I don't recommend Lilith.
Review posted here on Amazon.com.
But I do offer, for everyone I know that has ever loved trompe l'oeil or hidden rooms or libraries and books (*cough*century_eyes *cough*):
So we're installing this in the house ... tomorrow? Please?
Author: George MacDonald
Published: Project Gutenberg, 2013; New York: Dod, Mead & Co., 1895
Rating: 3 of 5
Page Count: 213
Total Page Count: 126,703
Text Number: 368
Read Because: fan of the author, e-book from Project Gutenberg
Review: Following a phantom, an average man is pulled into a strange world—one ephemeral and magical, where issues of salvation are not theoretical but are instead a literal battle and quest. Lilith is a direct allegory of Christian Universalist salvation, laid atop strange magics and stranger symbolism. Over landscapes effervescent and transcendent, shadowed and looming, the beginning of the book is more of a ramble than a journey; at his best MacDonald is deeply evocative, and while the book's internal mythos can be arbitrary it is just as often inspired and provoking. But as the book continues and develops direction, it sours. I love the compelling and flawed characters, but often felt as if I wasn't intended to: Lilith's desire for self-determination is sympathetic and inspiring, and then roundly condemned. The book's unique and delicate internal mythos is occasionally at conflict with and often trampled by the appearance of literal Christian figures and messages.
Lilith ends with the same beautiful imprecision with which it begins, which salvages some things. I admire MacDonald, and parts of this book are captivating; I even enjoy it thematically. But this is story made slave to allegory, and while it is somewhat too subtle to be preachy and works in bits and pieces—the fantastic landscape, the larger-than-life characters, the echoing of damnation and salvation in the threat and beauty of the setting—it crumbles as a whole. It pains me to rate this book relatively low, but it simply never clicked for me; I much prefer The Golden Key for its more delicate, less precise balance of the fantastic and symbolic, and I don't recommend Lilith.
Review posted here on Amazon.com.
But I do offer, for everyone I know that has ever loved trompe l'oeil or hidden rooms or libraries and books (*cough*
century_eyes *cough*):In one of the walls was the low, narrow door of a closet, containing some of the oldest and rarest of the books. It was a very thick door, with a projecting frame, and it had been the fancy of some ancestor to cross it with shallow shelves, filled with book-backs only. The harmless trick may be excused by the fact that the titles on the sham backs were either humorously original, or those of books lost beyond hope of recovery. I had a great liking for the masked door.
To complete the illusion of it, some inventive workman apparently had shoved in, on the top of one of the rows, a part of a volume thin enough to lie between it and the bottom of the next shelf: he had cut away diagonally a considerable portion, and fixed the remnant with one of its open corners projecting beyond the book-backs. The binding of the mutilated volume was limp vellum, and one could open the corner far enough to see that it was manuscript upon parchment.
—Lilith, George MacDonald, 7
So we're installing this in the house ... tomorrow? Please?
