The Girl in the Glass

by Susan Meissner
Colorado Springs, CO : WaterBrook Press, 2012.

*NOTE: This review refers to the book I received through LibraryThing Early Reviewers. As per the rules, I receive a free book in return for a review, and whether it's positive or negative has no affect on my receiving books in the future.*

Margaret has always dreamed of going to Florence, and her dad promised her nonna that he would bring her there someday. At the age of thirty, Meg is still waiting for her father to take that trip, though her parents are long divorced and he isn't known for following through on her promises. While working for a travel publisher, one of the writers in Florence sends Meg some chapters of a book that his neighbor, Sofia, has written. Meg is entranced by the book, in which the woman claims that she is a Medici, and one of her ancestors speaks to her through the art in Florence.

I've liked the two novels I've read by Susan Meissner - The Shape of Mercy and The Girl in the Glass. They're technically Christian fiction, but there's no real "message" and the Christianity isn't heavy-handed, so I would easily recommend her books to people who enjoyed gentle reads and didn't mind a brief mention of God and/or prayer. This story was full of peaks and valleys for me. I enjoyed the writing and descriptions, especially of Florence and its art. I enjoyed the memories of Nora Orsini, the Medici ancestor that Sofia hears, interspersed between chapters purposefully. I had a harder time with some of the plot points that were revealed later in the story, mainly because some revelations stretched my credulity and I personally had a hard time reconciling explanations from the beginning of the book with those revelations at the end. Still, it was a captivating enough story that I want to go visit Florence and read more about Renaissance history and the Medicis.

The Screwtape Letters

by C.S. Lewis
New York: HarperCollins, 2001 (orig. pub. 1943).

Screwtape, an old demon, writes letters of advice to his nephew Wormwood, who is on assignment tempting a young man with the ultimate goal of bringing his soul to Hell.

This has long been one of my favorites of Lewis' works, and a friend's recent read of it for a class prompted me to pick it up and reread it along with her. To my surprise, I found that though I've owned a copy for over a year, I have not reread it in the last six years or so (when I started tracking my reading). As a result, it didn't have the same sort of immediate familiarity of a yearly reread; it was more a gradual recognition as I read a letter and thought, "Oh yeah, I remember that now!" I had a lot of fun revisiting the book: it's at once humorous and hard-hitting, even convicting. The essay at the end, "Screwtape Proposes a Toast" was, if not entirely new, one I had forgotten entirely. In it, he talks about the way in which the idea of "democracy" can be twisted in education, and I was really amazed at how prescient some of Lewis' predictions were.

I've been debating whether or not I would recommend it to someone who didn't share Lewis' faith, and ultimately I would say, if the conceit interests you, then go ahead and try it, but I think that like his apologetic works it would really interest and have the greatest impact on those who already agreed with a Christian worldview.

Searching for God Knows What

by Donald Miller
Nashville, Tenn. : Thomas Nelson Inc., c2010.

What if the Christian church is so focused on theology that it's lost sight of what really makes one a Christian? Miller contends that the American church has reduced a complex relationship with Jesus Christ to a formulaic gospel of steps to becoming a Christian. In Searching for God Knows What, he seeks to emphasize the relational nature of the gospel and demonstrates how different a worldview this would be from mainstream American culture.

A friend of mine lent this to me months ago because it related to a conversation we were having at the time. Of course, I've since forgotten the original impetus, but it didn't really matter in the end. Miller's style is extremely conversational and not particularly well-written, with a few over-the-top analogies to make his points. At least once, he got his facts wrong, as when he says that King Herod had the children of Israel murdered (according to Matthew 2, he ordered that boys under the age of 2 in Bethlehem and the vicinity be killed, not the entirety of Israel). Despite these flaws, from time to time a sentence or a paragraph would make me stop in my reading tracks. He would manage to crystallize an idea or use an illustration that was truly thought-provoking. I didn't always agree with Miller, ultimately. He clearly does not "get" sports, for example, and his politics clash with mine. But I enjoyed the challenge to think about exactly what I believe about my relationship with God, and how this necessarily affects my relationship with others.

Surprised by Joy

by C.S. Lewis
New York : Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, c1955.
(my paperback copy was most certainly printed more recently than the copyright date, but I can't find the information regarding it)

In his introduction, Lewis makes it clear that he is not writing your normal autobiography, but is writing specifically about the events leading up to his conversion to Christianity. In some ways, I found it to be the autobiography of a mind and heart, from his early days in boarding school, his interests in mythology, and his growing dissatisfaction with the philosophies he once adhered to.

I have difficulty conceiving of anyone enjoying the book unless they agreed with either his particular scholar's mind or his belief in the God of Christianity. I happen to be in the latter camp, and confess that at times his mind eluded me. Whole passages referring either to the books that most moved him or schools of modern thought of his times completely eluded my grasp, and I can only conclude that my mind must work very differently from his or that I must have a longer time on this earth before I can fully grasp his reflections on childhood, boyhood, and young adulthood. Yet then a sentence, a thought, would break through and give me pause or move me to tears. This is a book that I would reread not so much because of any initial enjoyment but because my appreciation would increase, perhaps once I read another biography or some of the classics which molded his thought.

The Great Divorce

by C.S. Lewis
[San Francisco] : HarperSanFrancisco, 2001.

In this novella, C.S. Lewis investigates the eternal choice between Heaven and Hell, joy and despair. He structures the story as a dream: the soul of a man takes a journey, stopping at a place where there is a lot of empty space, where houses can be literally dreamed out of the ground and as people get into arguments they move farther and farther away from each other. Souls can choose to stay in this increasing wasteland or travel away from it. As the journey continues, the soul is met by George MacDonald, who becomes his teacher and explains more of what is going on.

I generally love C.S. Lewis. He has an interesting mind, and an interesting way of explaining things. I have loved the Chronicles of Narnia since I was a kid; I loved his more grown-up story Till We Have Faces when I read it for the first time two years ago. Just about any time I have a chance to buy one of his books, I do, so when I came across this in the bargain books several years ago, I snatched it. The Great Divorce, though short and easy to read, was a heady trip. I liked, but did not love it; I'm not sure I understood half of it. I had a similar reaction to this story in its entirety that I did to the end of Perelandra - the points he were making became so philosophical and over my head that I lost track of the argument and what I even thought about it. Still, it passed an afternoon pleasantly.

Her Mother's Hope

by Francine Rivers
Illinois: Tyndale House, 2010.

At age twelve, Marta knows what she wants out of life - she wants to continue learning, leave her family home behind, and own her own boarding house or hotel. Her abusive father takes her out of school and makes her work for families in their hometown of Steffisburg, Switzerland, but Marta makes the most of all she learns so that she can attain her dream. Family ties back home threaten to break her, however, for her sick mother and her gentle sister Elise stay behind. Her mother encourages her to fly, and Marta determines to do so regardless of her father's plans for her.

Covering about 50 years from 1901 to 1951, this is the story of Marta and her oldest daughter, Hildemara, and how their relationship is shaped by Marta's past. The two of them have very different temperaments, and their points of view dominate the story, but I connected and sympathized with both women. Unfortunately, none of the other characters are as fleshed out as Marta or Hildie. Time moves by fast, too, so that I was left wanting more information, though the story covers nearly 500 pages. Maybe I'm just not cut out for family sagas - I wanted Marta to have a story of her own, with more details instead of the broad brush strokes required to cover so much time in a short space.