Tumnus’s Bookshelf: The NarniaFans Book Reviews: ” Surprised By Joy.”

Hey, Everybody! Welcome to Tumnus’s Bookshelf where we review any and all books relating to the land of Narnia and her creator, CS Lewis. For today’s review we will be looking at CS Lewis’s Spiritual Autobiography, Surprised by Joy.

Title: Surprised by Joy

Author: CS Lewis

Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt; Revised edition (November 1, 1995)

ISBN-10: 0151001855

ISBN-13: 978-0151001859

Summary

From his boyhood in Ireland to his trip to the Whipsnad Zoo where he finally accepted Christ as his savior, CS Lewis tells his journey of faith. Along the way we encounter all the sign posts that pointed him along the road to salvation and are briefly introduced to the major players in his early years.

Review:

Allow me to start with a disclaimer. This book is by no means a “tell-all autobiography” that you may typically find now a days chronicling the lives of authors, film makers, actors or sport stars. Surprised by Joy falls more in line with St. Augustine’s Confessions, or Thomas Merton’s Seven Story Mountain. Like St. Autustine or Merton, this book is CS Lewis’s “spiritual autobiography.”

Also it should be noted that this book does not at all go into any details about his romance with Joy Davidman, despite the title. The book actually ends with CS Lewis’s conversion to Christianity, many years before he meet Joy. The title actually comes from the poem “Surprised by Joy” by Wordsworth, and deals with how the little “hints” of joy that he got in life helped him become a Christian.

We do not hear about the ups and downs of being part of the Oxford English faculty. We do not hear CS Lewis’s war stories from World War I. We do not even get to hear of the antics of the Lewis, Warnie, Tolkien and the other Inklings in the pub the frequented. Instead of all of that, as fun or worth while as they may be to read, we get something much better: We get a recollection about one man’s journey from disbelief to faith.

Of Lewis as a youngster, we discover that in some ways he was not that unlike Eustace Clarance Scrubb in Voyage of the Dawn Treader. We also find out he hated large social functions loved reading, especially epic myths. We learn about the pain he felt at the death of his mother and how that loss effected him. Most importantly e learn that every instance in his life, good or bad, be it the friends he made to the books he read how it was all used by God to point him towards salvation.

Despite being a book similar to Confessions in some respects, Surprised by Joy is much easier to read then Augustine’s work. Much of that is due to the fact that Lewis as a narrator is no different in this book then he is in the land of Narnia. He isn’t trying to wow you or impress you with anything hard hitting and there is nothing overly controversial that the describes, at least not in detail, and much like in his Narnian Chronicles, he spares readers of the horrors of war and merely brushes upon the subject. All of this makes it an acceptable read for children and adults. There are also plenty of excellent theological insights that he provides.

For those looking for a good book about CS Lewis’s life this is the perfect place to star. It not only tells a good story about his life, but is one of the last great Spiritual Autobiographies out there . In a time of sleezy tell all biographies it is great to read a book that focus on much deeper aspects of a persons life then just life itself. Surprised by Joy is a celebration of those things.

Five out of Five Shields