Hey, everybody! Welcome back to Tumnus’ Bookshelf: The NarniaFans Book Reviews where we review any and all books written by, about, and inspired by CS Lewis, The Land of Narnia, and The Inklings. For today’s review we will be looking at Abigail Santamaria’s new biography Joy: Poet, Seeker, and The Woman Who Captivated CS Lewis.
Title: Joy: Poet, Seeker, and the Woman who Captivated CS Lewis
Author: Abigail Santamaria
Publisher: Houghton Mifflin Harcourt
ISBN-10: 0151013713
ISBN-13: 978-0151013715
Summary:
In this new biography, Joy: Poet, Seeker, and the Woman Who Captivated CS Lewis, Abigail Santamaria unwraps one of the literary world’s greatest love stories by telling the life story of Joy Davidman Gresham. From her childhood growing up in New York City and her adoption of atheism, to her intense education, to her time as a Communist, to her career as a poet, to her stint as a Hollywood screenwriter, to dabbling with a cult, Joy’s life was a search for love and meaning. Then she married Bill Gresham and figured her life was set. Her life really changed when she became a mother.
Health problems rose, and finances fluctuated as did the careers of Joy and Bill. Even their love died, as the two grew apart and battled their own demons. Amidst this tumultuous time, she discovered the books of CS Lewis and fell in love with the mind of this author. In encountering Lewis she came to the Christian faith. Setting off to England, she was determined to meet the author who changed her life in more ways than one. She would go on to help edit some of his greatest works, and for a short time, became his wife until her death from cancer.
Review:
No doubt many longtime fans know the love story of CS Lewis and Joy Davidman. Whether it’s from the play The Shadowlands or the vast library of biographies on his life we all know the details of their brief time together. However, those books are all about Jack. This has left fans wondering just who was this “bold, brash, American Jewish convert” that won his heart?
It is with great pleasure that I say that Abigail Santamaria’s new book Joy: Poet, Seeker, and the Woman Who Captivated CS Lewis perfectly fills that void, as we get a warts and all picture of her life. Joy was so much more than her romance with CS Lewis, just as CS Lewis was more than just his marriage to Joy or his friendship with Tolkien, or even the creator of Narnia. Joy’s romance with Lewis was one small part of the story of her life.
This means we learn some things that may be unsettling to some CS Lewis fans. Before coming to Christ through Lewis’ writings, Joy was not only an atheist, but was a member of the communist party and even dabbled in what we now identify as Scientology when it was in its embryonic phase. As Santamaria reminds us, Lewis himself observed that Joy was a sinful woman who married a sinful man. If either of them were perfect they would have no need of grace or redemption.
We learn that even before this, Joy’s was far from perfect. She and her family, being Jewish Americans faced more than their share of bigotry. Her father was a hard man, demanding nothing short of excellence from her and her brother feeling they had to work hard to prove themselves. The growing young girl was bright, articulate and well read, and always searching for something more. This search led her to bad politics, dead-end writing gigs, a dangerous cult, and even bad romances and one-sided crushes on actors she met while working as a screenwriter.
Thanks to her careful research, Santamaria unpacks the myths and legends we have about Joy and her first marriage to Bill. Life is very rarely as clean cut as it is in a romantic comedy or even an independent Christian film where everyone’s roles in a romance are clearly defined. Real life is messy, and people much more nuanced then that. Bill battled his demons, but so do did Joy. For example, we learn that Joy was prone to going on mad spending sprees in moments of stress, which was taxing on finances. More than anything Joy and Bill just weren’t right for each other.
We also see that much like Lewis was friends with Tolkien and Charles Williams, Joy had her own share of noteworthy friends, among them Belle “Bel” Kaufman author of Up the Down Staircase and granddaughter of Sholem Aleichem, the Yiddish humorist who created Tevye the Milkman which was the inspiration for the musical Fiddler on the Roof. She also chose the boarding school for Douglas and David based on a referral from Mary Poppins author PL Travers, whom Joy had met and had tea with.
We also get a greater sense just why Lewis friends like Tolkien, and George Sayer were put off by her. Aside from the social scandal that ensued, these men who would have grown up in Edwardian England found this woman who would drink whisky and tell jokes that would make them blush off putting. Moreover, Joy was not the only woman who fancied Lewis. There were some women whom we could describe in today’s vernacular as “crazed fangirls” who were dead set on becoming “Mrs. CS Lewis”, and not only were Tolkien and Sayer worried she was one of them, they didn’t want their all too generous friend to be taken advantage of by a possible gold digger.
Despite how “messy” Joy’s life was, Santamaria writes with a lot of grace and clarity. As the book progresses you really feel a degree of sympathy for not only Joy and her boys, but for Bill, and everyone else in their lives. We come away with a better picture of these people, and hope for them to find better. Santamaria crafts a rare biography that is a page turner.
One thing, however, that really makes this book a “must-buy” for fans is the excerpts from Joy’s diary and her poems that are republished in this book. Through these works we get to see just what a great match she was for Lewis. She possessed a creative spark similar to his own, which not only made her a good wife, but an excellent editor for Lewis final works, among them Till We Have Faces. There is also a veritable treasure trove of pictures never seen by longtime fans. Sanatmaria notes that even Douglas Gresham hadn’t seen many of these in years.
Prediction can be tricky, but there is little doubt that Abigail Santamaria’s Joy: Poet, Seeker, and the Woman Who Captivated CS Lewis is an exquisite biography on one half of the literary world’s greatest romances. While some subject matter in the book means it is not suitable for children (as is the case for most grown up biographies), adult fans will no doubt enjoy this book. It deserves a spot on every Inklings fans book shelf beside George Sayer’s biography on CS Lewis, and Joseph Pearce’s Tolkien: Man and Myth.
Five out of Five Shields
