Tag: book reviews

Let’s Talk About the Sun

On By Jennifer MugrageLeave a comment

1 The heavens declare the glory of God;

the skies proclaim the work of His hands.

2 Day after day they pour forth speech;

night after night they display knowledge.

3 There is no speech or language where their voice is not heard.

4 Their voice goes out into all the earth, their words to the ends of the world.

In the heavens He has pitched a tent for the sun,

5 which is like a bridegroom coming forth from his pavilion,

like a champion rejoicing to run his course.

6 It rises at one end of the heavens and makes its circuit to the other;

nothing is hidden from its heat.

7 The law of the LORD is perfect, reviving the soul.

The statutes of the LORD are trustworthy, making wise the simple.

8 The precepts of the LORD are right, giving joy to the heart.

The commands of the LORD are radiant, giving light to the eyes.

9 The fear of the LORD is pure, enduring forever.

The ordinances of the LORD are sure and altogether righteous.

10 They are more precious than gold, than much pure gold;

they are sweeter than honey, than honey from the comb.

11 By them is your servant warned; in keeping them is great reward.

12 Who can discern his errors? Forgive my hidden faults.

13 Keep your servant also from willful sins;

may they not rule over me.

Then will I be blameless, innocent of great transgression.

14 May the words of my mouth and the meditation of my heart

be pleasing in your sight,

O LORD, my Rock and my Redeemer.

–Psalm 19, of David

The following is a reader-response literary analysis of Psalm 19.

This is an extremely famous psalm. If you have been around Bible circles for any length of time, you probably have heard it quoted. I was no different, but for some reason, it took me 40 years to really understand why the elements of this psalm are here and how they all work together. So perhaps you can find some benefit from following my plodding steps.

The first four verses of Psalm 19 are often quoted. They describe how the skies and space themselves testify to all humankind that there is a God and that He is glorious. Paul alludes to this in Romans 1, where he says, “since the creation of the world God’s invisible qualities–His eternal power and divine nature–have been clearly seen, being understood from what has been made, so that men are without excuse.” Of course, God makes it abundantly clear to the Israelites that the sun, moon, and stars are in fact creatures and that He is not pleased when people worship them … which raises the question of sun-worship … which we will get to momentarily.

Similarly, the last three verses of the psalm–the prayer for personal cleansing from sin–are also often quoted. These are very accessible. You could pick them up and pray them, with no obstacles to understanding, if you became a Christian just yesterday. On a slightly deeper level, I have heard these verses taught as a very savvy description of the progressive nature of sin. It starts out as “hidden faults,” then if unrepented becomes “willful,” which leads to sin ruling over a person, and this state of being ruled by sin eventually leads to some egregious “great transgression.”

And this is really a psalm that is best understood back to front. If the last three verses are the most easily accessible, verses 7 – 11, about the law of God, are a close second. True to Hebrew poetry, David uses a bunch of different synonyms: law, statutes, precepts, commands, ordinances, and, interestingly, fear. Obviously these are English translations of Hebrew words for God’s law, of which the language had quite a number.

To David, he wasn’t just referring to the Ten Commandments or to the book of Leviticus. By all these synonyms he meant the whole “law of God,” that is all the revealed word of God that they had at the time. And by his inclusion of fear, it’s also clear that he meant the revelation of God’s nature, His presence with His people, and the holy awe that they were supposed to have in response.

However, I don’t want to unsay what the psalm says. The emphasis in these verses is clearly on the moral, right-and-wrong aspect of God’s word. God has given us a law. But rather than just being an obscure collection of ancient rules, this is a law that somehow revives the human soul, makes the simple wise, gives joy to the heart, light to the eyes, endures forever, warns, and is sweeter than honey.

It was for this passage that I returned to Psalm 19 recently. I had noticed after forgetting for a while–again–as one does–that without some kind of moral standard coming from outside ourselves, human beings are really and truly sunk. If there is no objective right and wrong, then might makes right and all truth claims are actually just attempts to grab power. (Thank you, Derrida!) The last couple of hundred years have been a big social experiment demonstrating this. Again.

So, my original reason for pulling out Psalm 19 was so I could pray verses 7 – 11 and thank God for His Word. Of course, as a Christian, I had an even more in-depth appreciation for the treasure that Bible truly is. It doesn’t just give us the only extra-human set of truth claims upon which a civilization can be built. It’s also, by far, our most comprehensive and reliable source text on ancient history. As if that weren’t enough, it’s not written in dry legalese or as lists of facts, but in the form of stirring stories, terrifying mythological scenes, and challenging and moving poetry. Books, and libraries, are already a treasure, but this particular library of books is truly “more precious than gold, than much pure gold.”

So I really just wanted to quote that back to God. But it’s a short psalm, and the confession verses at the end are sooo good, so of course I ended up reading the whole thing out loud whenever I went to use it.

The only sour note in this symphony of devotion were the verses about the sun. They seemed overdone. I get that we are talking about the skies and things in the skies, but why devote three whole verses just to poetically describing the sun? Rabbit trail much, David?

Then, after I don’t know how many iterations, it dawned (even) upon me that there might, possibly, be a few similarities between the sun and the law of God as described in the verses that follow it. Let’s see: nothing is hidden from its heat. It covers the whole earth and all people. It’s inescapable. It gives light to the eyes, and it revives the soul (think about the effect of sunlight after a long night!). It gives hope. But it can also be kind of oppressive. It “warns.” It also disinfects things that are exposed to it. Hiding from the sun is not usually a good sign. It can be a metaphor for hiding wrongdoing. However, we do still need shelter from the sun, because it’s pretty intense. Almost as if it were a small picture of the One Who is too holy to look upon.

Haha! I get it now!

There was just one remaining fly in the ointment. I really didn’t see why it was necessary for David to compare the sun to “a bridegroom coming forth from his pavilion” … that is, to a young man who has just had sex with his wife for the first time. Yeah, I suppose that does give a guy a certain glow. Yeah, Hebrew poetry is earthy. I get it. But … why? Is this just there to make modern readers squirm?

In the providence of God, I happened to be reading Till We Have Faces. In this book, the narrator (Orual) has a little sister (Psyche) who marries a god. This is literal, not figurative. It is a retelling of the Cupid and Psyche myth.

Orual meets her divine brother-in-law twice. The first time, it is in terrible judgment:

There came as it were a lightning that endured. That is, the look of it was the look of lightning, pale, dazzling, without warmth or comfort, showing each smallest thing with fierce distinctiveness, but it did not go away. This great light stood over me as still as a candle burning in a curtained and shuttered room. In the center of the light was something like a man. It is strange that I cannot tell you its size. Its face was far above me, yet memory does not show the shape as a giant’s. And I do not know whether it stood, or seemed to stand, on the far side of the water or on the water itself.

Though this light stood motionless, my glimpse of the face was as swift as a true flash of lightning. I could not bear it for longer. Not my eyes only, but my heart and blood and very brain were too weak for that. A monster would have subdued me less than the beauty this face wore. And I think anger (what men call anger) would have been more supportable than the passionless and measureless rejection with which it looked upon me.

-Till We Have Faces, pp. 172 – 173

The second time, Orual’s literal and metaphorical ugliness has been cleansed, and the god coming to judge her is going to see only beauty:

“Did I not tell you, Maia,” she said, “that a day was coming when you and I would meet in my house and no cloud between us?”

Joy silenced me. But now, what was this? You have seen torches grow pale when men open the shutters and broad summer morning shines in on the feasting hall? So now. Suddenly, from a strange look on Psyche’s face, or from a glorious and awful deepening of the blue sky above us, or from a deep breath like a sigh uttered all round us by invisible lips, or from a deep, doubtful, quaking and surmise in my own heart, I knew that all this had been only a preparation. Some far greater matter was upon us. The voices spoke again; but not loud this time. They were awed and trembled. “He is coming,” they said. “The god is coming into his house. The god comes to judge Orual.”

The air was growing brighter and brighter about us; as if something had set it on fire. Each breath I drew let into me new terror, joy, overpowering sweetness. I was pierced through and through with the arrows of it. I was being unmade. And he was coming. The most dreadful, the most beautiful, the only dread and beauty there is, was coming. The pillars on the far side of the pool flushed at his approach. I cast down my eyes.

“You also are Psyche,” came a great voice.

–ibid, pp. 306 – 308

The bridegroom is actually the one Who links everything together in this poem. C.S. Lewis had to hit me over the head with an extremely long, vivid description before I could see it, but I see it now. The god–Christ–is the bridegroom and He’s also the sun. He comes in horrible, revealing judgment, he comes in shining beauty, He overwhelms the senses. He convicts and purifies and beautifies the people that His light touches. And, of course, He is also the Word. And Word also does all these things.

Amen. Come, Lord Jesus.

You Guys, Theseus’s Father-Hunger is Breaking My Heart

On By Jennifer Mugrage1 Comment

I read The King Must Die back in university. My education up to that point had some gaping holes, but I had been privileged to attend a school one time where they spent an entire year getting us thoroughly familiar with Greek myths and history. My point is, I knew the story of Theseus. I knew the labyrinth and the Minotaur were the main event. And I was eager to get to them. So I moved through the first part of the book at a pretty good clip, the part that tells of Theseus’ childhood in Troizen, his coming of age, and his journey across the Peloponnesian Peninsula to find his father, the king of Athens.

I thought then, and still think now, that Theseus is not an especially likeable character to modern eyes. He’s a prince of Heroic Age Greek culture, and he is, as they say, a product of his time. He is proud, ambitious, pious towards the gods, stoic, brave, and clever (those are his virtues), and also snobby, entitled, callous, cruel, sexist, and promiscuous. He has all the virtues of ancient paganism, but none of the virtues a Christian man. You can’t endorse all his actions or even his value system. (By the way, that is exactly what makes this such a fantastic historical novel.) But despite all this, there are moments in his story that ring incredibly poignant. And these are moments that I either forgot since my first reading, or missed entirely.

You want to hear about the Minotaur? Let me tell you about a son and his father.

Theseus’s grandfather is king in Troizen, a small Greek kingdom on the east coast of the Peloponnesian Peninsula (or what they call the Isle of Pelops). His mother, a princess, had him when she was a teenager. She lives, still unmarried, in the palace, and serves as a priestess of the Mother, who is goddess left over from before the Greeks arrived, whom they feel they must give her due.

Theseus’s mother has always told him that he is the son of Poseidon. Theseus takes this seriously as a little child. He views the sacred horse, also called a son of Poseidon, as his brother. He whispers “Are you there, Father?” into the sacred well that sometimes grumbles when Poseidon is stirred up. But as he gets a little older, he sees that other people doubt he has a divine father. He becomes defensive.

Truly “god-got” children are known to be really tall, and Theseus has always been small for his age. He waits and waits to grow (he hopes to be six or seven feet tall). He develops “short man syndrome,” taking daring risks in order to prove himself in front of the other boys. He is the best at every sport except for Hellene-style wrestling, because that requires mass and weight.

Once, he even swims way out into the ocean, figuring either Poseidon will prove he is his father, or Theseus will welcome a death by drowning. The current sweeps him back to the island, and he figures he has his answer.

Then Theseus turns seventeen, and his mother shows him the rock that his father said he should try to raise in order to prove whose son he is. So, it wasn’t Poseidon after all.

Theseus tries and can’t raise it by brute strength. He is broken, furious with his mother who won’t tell him anything.

But eventually, he realizes that he can raise it with a lever. That’s when he finds the sword.

His grandfather tells him the story, which is full of the tragedy, ugliness and beauty of ancient paganism is and basically a mini novel within this novel. There was a plague, a drought. Apollo claimed not to be responsible. Poseidon wasn’t answering. Finally, the priestess said it was the Mother. “A virgin must go and wait in the myrtle-house and give herself to the first man who comes along.” The priestess disliked Theseus’s mother, because she was an attractive young girl. His grandfather couldn’t see a way to get her out of this.

But it happened that Aigeus, the thirtysomething king of Athens, was visiting Troizen. He agreed with Theseus’s grandfather that he would be the man. At least the princess would lose her virginity to someone she had met before, and he would be kind and gentle with her. They could not tell her about this arrangement beforehand, because when a member of the royal family is in some way sacrificing themselves for the people, their willingness to make the sacrifice is a critical element. Only then will the god bless it.

The thunderstorm was already arriving. Aigeus stripped and swam across the channel to the sacred island where the Myrtle House was. A flash of lightning revealed to the princess a dark-haired man rising up out of the water, with a ribbon of seaweed on his shoulder. She thought he was Poseidon. She knelt, and crossed her arms over her chest, as one would do for a god.

Why didn’t he wait for the boat? Why did he jump into unknown waters, in a rainstorm, and swim across? Was Poseidon indeed possessing him? say these pagans. Who knows?

Theseus is disappointed, but intrigued, to find out that he has a human father. He travels over the Isthmus (a dangerous and lawless place), gets entangled with the earth-mother-worshipping people of Eleusis, which is very creepy, and eventually makes it to Athens and reveals himself to his father, narrowly escaping being assassinated first.

On the map above, if you look around the Saronic Gulf, you can see Troezen on the south side, Athens on the north side, and Eleusis just a bit west of Athens. I wish I’d had this map 25 years ago, when I first read the book.

Aigeus has no other sons. He is thunderstruck and delighted to see Theseus.

There’s not exactly hugging and crying, because both of them are proud, aristocratic, cautious men. On the whole, Aigeus probably wears his feelings closer to the surface than Theseus does. Still, they start getting to know each other.

Theseus’s birthday is approaching. Aigeus wants to have a feast for him. Theseus suggests sending to Troizen to bring his mother for the feast, but Aigeus dismisses this plan. If they wait, the time will get too close to “the tribute” (the sending of young men and women to Crete), and he doesn’t want to be celebrating his long-lost son when some of his subjects have just had to give up theirs.

It’s at this point that the reader who knows the outline of the story realizes that Theseus and his father are not going to have much more time together.

The day of the feast comes. Aigeus gifts Theseus a chariot, “of dark polished cypress-wood, with ivory inlays and silver-bound wheels, a craftsman’s masterpiece.”

It was a gift beyond my dearest wish. I thank him on one knee, putting his hand to my brow; but he said, “Why this haste, before you have seen the horses?”

They were matched blacks, with white-blazed foreheads; strong and glossy, sons of the north wind. My father said, “Aha, we slipped them up here, as neat as Hermes the Trickster lifting Apollo’s steers. The chariot while you were in Eleusis; and the horses this very morning, while you still slept.”

He rubbed his hands together. I was touched at his taking all this care to surprise me, as if I had been a child. “We must take them out,” I said. “Father, finish your business early, and I will be your charioteer.” We agreed that after the rites, we would drive to Paionia below Hymettos.

pp. 154 – 155

In case you missed it, Aigeus just gave his son a sports car.

After the rites, Theseus goes to the stables and waits and waits for his father. When the king does show up, he seems to have forgotten their plan to take a ride. He is stressed out by something. He urges Theseus to ride by himself, but to leave by the back gate.

The reader realizes, with a sinking feeling, that the representatives from Crete have come early to collect the youths and maidens for the tribute.

Aigeus, almost in tears, is trying to get Theseus away from there. But Theseus, too sharp not to realize something is wrong and too proud to be hustled out the back, quickly finds out what is happening and insists on entering the deadly lottery.

And now, the reader realizes that they are never, ever going to take that chariot ride.

The youths and maidens of Athens are chosen by putting their names on scraps of pottery, which are then drawn at random out of a bowl. Aigeus puts in a lot for his son, on which he has surreptitiously written some other youth’s name. But Theseus, standing among the crowd, realizes what has happened when he sees that his father is not worried. What should he do? Should he let the deception stand? Or should he stride forward and insist on being among those who are sacrificed?

I thought, “What was it? What has my father done? What every father would do if he could. And he is King. He has to think for the kingdom. It is true enough that I am needed here. I ought not to think like a warrior only. Has someone else gone to Crete for me? I have led such lads to war, and never thought I wronged them, though some were sure to die. Why then do I hate my father, and myself still more, and feel I cannot bear my life?”

I looked at my father, and remembered how he had invoked Poseidon, praying him to choose the victims. And I thought, “Yes! That is it! He has mocked the god, the guardian of the house, who brought him to beget me. Well may I be angry! This man has mocked my father.”

p. 163

Theseus begins praying his heart to Poseidon. He senses that the god wants him to go to Crete. It is time to make the sacrifice.

Sorrow fell black upon my eyes and the sun grew cold. I thought of what I had planned to do in Athens: small things I had to hoped to force my father’s hand to, great ones when my own time came. I knelt where I was, with my hair hiding my face, and thought of my life; of hunting with the Guard, of feasts and dances, of my room with the lion walls; of a woman I wanted, and had meant to speak to at the festival; of my beautiful horses, who had scarcely felt my hand; of the war paean, the bright rage of battle, and the triumph song. And I thought, “The god cannot mean it. He sent me here to be king.”

“Father Poseidon,” I whispered, “take something else from me. I will not ask to live long, if I can make a name and be remembered in Athens. Now it will be as if I had never been born.” I heard the name called of some Athenian. It was the last of the seven. “Lord Poseidon, I will give you my horses, the best I ever had. Take anything but this.”

The sea-sound grew fainter in my ears. And I thought, “The god is leaving me.”

p. 164

So off he goes. Rather than lose the unction of the god to rule, Theseus insists on going to Crete, where, he has been told, bull-dancers last six months at the most.

“Don’t grieve, Athenians. The god is sending me. He has called me to the bulls, and I must obey his sign. But don’t weep for me, I will come again.” I did not know these words till I had spoken them; they came to me from the god. “I will go with your children, and take them into my hand. They shall be my people.”

They had left off weeping, and their voices sank to a hush. I turned, and faced my father.

I saw the face of a man who has got his death-wound.

p. 165

I mean!

This is Taking a Toll.

On By Jennifer Mugrage5 Comments

Hello, fellow readers. I just don’t know.

This is an unplanned post. But, after all, a blog is a “web-log,” no? As in, a record of how we are doing day to day. And book blogs are records of how our reading affects us.

And whoof. Reading Greco-fiction is proving costlier than I anticipated.

First, there was Circe, with its depressing picture of Odysseus slipping into OCD paranoia after his return to Ithaca.

Then, I read Till We Have Faces, which is sort of like having the Holy Spirit do open heart surgery on you, if you really pore over it.

Now, I’m sitting here trying to work, but I’m having to take a break because reading The King Must Die has made my stomach hurt. That is not an exaggeration; I am experiencing psychologically caused stomach pain from reading this book.

I had some time to myself this morning, before leaving for the office. I thought I’d just get caught up on my reading of The King Must Die. Plus, it is hard to put down. I enjoyed reading about the earthquake that brought down the palace of Knossos. I relished when the Greek ship passed the island of Kalliste, the source of the earthquake, and the watery crater where the island used to lie. (This is the eruption of Thera, a well-documented event that took place about 1500 B.C.) Theseus is bringing with him Princess Ariadne of Crete. He is in love with her, and he has promised her father Minos that he will marry her and protect her.

The party lands on the Isle of Dia. I knew what was coming, but I kept reading. I remember this from university.

The people on the Isle of Dia are about to have a festival to Dionysius. Terrible things happen at such times, but everyone is in an altered state. A sacrificial man is torn apart by the wild women, the Maenads. I mean with their bare hands, teeth, etc.

Ariadne participates in this ceremony. When Theseus finds her, sleeping the wine off peacefully, all covered in someone else’s blood and still holding a body part, he vomits. He knew the king must die, but he didn’t anticipate exactly how it would happen. And he’s only eighteen years old.

I knew what would happen, but for some reason, it affected me worse this time. Perhaps because this time, I have children the ages of Theseus, Ariadne (16), and the “King” (also 16) whom she murdered.

At the same time, I can’t just dismiss it as follows: “Well, of course. It’s paganism. It’s all horrible and worthless, not worth caring about these people, not worth my time.” The reason these stories still intrigue us is because there is some very deep stuff going on there. And The King Must Die is filled, almost on every page, with Biblical easter eggs, both as direct quotes and as symbolic allusions. Even the Dionysian ceremony has them. Though I don’t doubt those wild women would indeed have to be possessed, and not in a good way, to do what they did.

Anyway, I’ll get to how I found Christ in The King Must Die in a later post, when I have gathered myself. I just wanted to report that it sort of ruined my day.

Have you ever had a physical reaction to a book? And did you still like the book after?

Till We Have Faces: A Book Review

On By Jennifer Mugrage3 Comments

Friends, I have had a harrowing experience.

I read Till We Have Faces.

Again.

That’s right, this wasn’t even a first-time read, and it destroyed me. Again. Maybe worse this time.

It’s tempting to do a super detailed book review, including an analysis of all the ancient customs, the Bible Easter eggs, and the symbolism. (My God, the symbolism!) But I’m not going to do that, because I really think you should read it if at all possible. And, even though this book is possibly more powerful on re-reads, I still don’t want to ruin your first read with spoilers.

Any analysis I gave, would be less of an immersive experience than the story itself, because that is the power of fiction.

I will just say a few things about the setting and genre, so you can decide whether to subject yourself to it.

I read TWHF as part of my 2026 “Greco-fiction” project, where I read books set in and/or inspired by the Heroic Age of Greece. When I mentioned this project to someone, they suggested Till We Have Faces. They were right, of course, though I hadn’t put it in the same category in my mind as, say, The Song of Achilles.

The action takes place in a fictional country called Glome. Based upon hints in the text, Glome is located somewhere just south or just north of the Caucasus Mountains, between the Black and Caspian seas. Georgia, Azerbaijan, perhaps southern Russia. Glome is not a mountainous kingdom, but it is near mountains. In the distance, they can see “what we call the sea, though it is nowhere nearly as great as the Great Sea of the Greeks.” This would probably be the Caspian. They are far from Greece, but near enough that they occasionally encounter a Greek captive taken in war. They are near enough to “Phars” (Persia) for that country to present a problem. At one point, the narrative makes a passing mention of “the wagon people, who live beyond the Grey Mountain.” These “wagon people” are probably steppe-dwellers related to the Scythians or Kazaks.

The people of Glome worship a fertility goddess called Ungit, who is embodied in a large irregular black stone that is said to have pushed its way up from the earth. Ungit’s “house” is a group of megaliths joined together with walls. Her worship involves temple prostitution, animal sacrifice, and sometimes human sacrifice, all the usual things that you expect with a fertility religion. Her priest wears a large bird mask on his chest, and dangles with amulets and animal bladders.

The narrator, a little girl named Orual, is frightened of the priest and of Ungit. The story will go on to focus on this fear. Orual very much hopes that the gods are, as her Greek tutor has told her, merely “lies of poets, lies of poets, child.” But are they? Or is there a power in Ungit (and in her son, who dwells on the Grey Mountain) that will leave Orual quite outmatched?

C.S. Lewis is an underrated horror writer. In this story he draws back the curtain on the horror of paganism. We also see, I think, hints of how he himself felt when he was an atheist: desperately hoping there is no spiritual world; uneasily worried that there might be. Relieved, but unsatisfied, by the “clear, shallow” Greek explanations.

So, I’ve said enough. Read it if you dare. I doubt that this year will bring me a better book in the category of Greco-Fiction.

Why Should Your Heart Not Dance?

On By Jennifer MugrageLeave a comment

In my Greco-Fiction project, I have briefly set aside The King Must Die in order to re-read Till We Have Faces. I have to read TWHF for a book club, but I can’t complain, really, because I was one who convinced the book club to read it for our February discussion.

If you have never heard of it, Till We Have Faces is one of C.S. Lewis’s lesser-known novels. The point of view character is a young woman, a princess in the ancient, fictional kingdom of Glome, who is cursed with an ugly face, an abusive father, and a horrible fertility goddess for a religion. Her name is Orual. The first bright spot in Orual’s life is a Greek slave her father captured in war, who becomes her tutor. The second, and much brighter, spot is her younger half-sister Psyche.

The back of the book describes it as a “timeless tale of two princesses–one beautiful and one unattractive.” Naturally, when I first picked it up, then in my late teens, I thought, “Well, I know which one of these I will identify with!” Like probably every young woman, I expected to have a grand time wallowing in self-pity on behalf of the ugly princess. However, this is not that kind of story. Orual is not envious of Psyche’s beauty. The jealousy she feels is of a very different kind.

I don’t want to give away the events of the story, because you should definitely read it. However, I do want to post a long passage from the book. This passage is very important thematically, and in terms of Orual’s character development, even though it is not an action scene.

When we topped [the ridge], and stood for a while to let the horse breathe, everything was changed. And my struggle began.

We had come into the sunlight now, too bright to look into, and warm (I threw back my cloak). Heavy dew made the grass jewel-bright. The Mountain, far greater yet also far further off than I expected, seen with the sun hanging a hand-breadth above its topmost crags, did not look like a solid thing. Between us and it was a vast tumble of valley and hill, woods and cliffs, and more little lakes than I could count. To the left and right, and behind us, the whole coloured world with all its hills was heaped up and up to the sky, with, far away, a gleam of what we call the sea. There was a lark singing; but for that, huge and ancient stillness.

And my struggle was this. You may well believe that I had set out sad enough; I came on a sad errand. Now, flung at me like frolic or insolence, there came as if it were a voice–no words–but if you made it into words it would be, “Why should your heart not dance?” It’s the measure of my folly that my heart almost answered, “Why not?” I had to tell myself over and over like a lesson the infinite reasons it had not to dance. My heart to dance? Mine whose love was taken from me, I, the ugly princess who must never look for other love, the drudge of the King, perhaps to be murdered or turned out as a beggar when my father died? And yet, it was a lesson I could hardly keep in my mind. The sight of the huge world put mad ideas into me, as if I could wander away, wander forever, see strange and beautiful things, one after the other to the world’s end. The freshness and wetness all about me made me feel that I had misjudged the world; it seemed kind, and laughing, as if its heart also danced. Even my ugliness I could not quite believe in. Who can feel ugly when the heart meets delight? It is as if, somewhere inside, within the hideous face and bony limbs, one is soft, fresh, lissom and desirable.

Was I not right to struggle against this fool-happy mood? What woman can have patience with the man who can be yet again deceived by his doxy’s fawning after he has thrice proved her false? I should be just like such a man if a mere burst of fair weather, and fresh grass after a long drought, and health after sickness, could make me friends again with this god-haunted, plague-breeding, decaying, tyrannous world.

pp. 95 – 97

Misanthropic Quote: Most Cliches in One Paragraph

On By Jennifer Mugrage6 Comments

Gardy was essentially convicted the day he was arrested, and his trial is only a formality. The dumb and desperate cops trumped up the charges and fabricated the evidence. The prosecutor knows this but has no spine and is up for reelection next year. The judge is asleep. The jurors are basically nice, simple people, wide-eyed at the process and ever so anxious to believe the lies their proud authorities are producing on the witness stand.

-from Rogue Lawyer, 2016, by a very lazy version of John Grisham

I’m thinking of having a little contest. Who can find a paragraph crammed with the greatest number of offensive, lazy cliches? This is my submission. This is only the second half of the paragraph, but even if I had included the first two sentences, I still think you’d be hard-pressed to find another piece of writing where not a single word is wasted on any original thought.

Greco-Fiction: Circe

On By Jennifer Mugrage7 Comments

About the Greco-Fiction

This year, I decided that my fiction focus would be novels inspired by ancient Greek myths. I don’t always pick a fiction focus, but this year, things just coalesced.

In the classical Christian school where I teach, we follow a 4-year “history cycle.” Ancient World, Medieval World, Exploration/Renaissance, Modern World. This year, we are cycling through Ancient, so I have been immersed in the Flood, the Sumerians, Abraham, Egypt, and the Iliad and Odyssey. (Somewhat immersed, of course. We could always immerse ourselves more.)

Revisiting Mycenae and Crete, I remembered that back in university (in the last millennium!) I read what I thought was a fantastic book that was a re-telling of Theseus. Looked it up, and it turns out it was The King Must Die by Mary Renault. And it turns out that Renault has a bunch of other books that I’ve never read. (Back in the last millennium, the way we found books was we stumbled upon them in the library.) So, onto the list went at least a re-read of The King Must Die and its sequel, The Bull from the Sea. I bought myself copies of these for Christmas using my husband’s money, so technically he bought me the copies for Christmas.

Meanwhile, years ago I had won a copy of Circe, and had been waiting to read it until I was ready to stick my head back in the ancient Mediterranean. I’m also aware that Madeline Miller has at least one more book, The Song of Achilles, which is from Patroclos’s point of view. Gay, of course (and that is historically accurate). I decided I might read that, depending upon how I enjoyed or didn’t enjoy Circe. You can write about ancient Greek events from a hard-core feminist/queer perspective, or you can not. I wanted to know first what approach Miller was taking.

Finally, some of my students have been reading Percy Jackson, with the result that they are already quite familiar with the Greek pantheon. I’d known that the Jackson books were out there, so perhaps now is the year when I read at least a few of them. Jackson went onto the list.

Then there are the rereads. Til We Have Faces is C.S. Lewis’s masterpiece, set probably in Scythia or the Caucasus, near the Greeks but not too near. Moving farther from Greece, we have Taliesin, Merlin, and Arthur by Steven R. Lawhead. I read Taliesin in high school. It’s Celtic, not Greek, except that about half the book takes place on Atlantis, with bull dancing and stuff, so I figure that counts. Now, the Daily Wire has made a TV series based on these books. The events of Taliesin take up about an episode and a half. So, if I have time, I’ll reread/read Steven R. Lawhead.

So, here is the list as it stands …

  • Circe
  • The Song of Achilles?
  • The King Must Die
  • The Bull from the Sea
  • other books by Renault?
  • Til We Have Faces
  • at least a couple of Percy Jackson books
  • Taliesin
  • Merlin?
  • Arthur?

This should fulfill the twelve books that I told Goodreads I’m planning on, this year.

In the course of my teaching year, I have already read The Cat of Bubastes with my students, and am now reading Hittite Warrior, which is also very good. Also on the docket is The Young Carthaginian.

So, how was Circe?

I loved this book. It is exactly the genre I like. Miller did a fantastic job keeping track of all the gods, titans, and nymphs, their little feuds, and their family relations to one another.

Circe, in The Odyssey, is a “witch” whom Odysseus and his men encounter on the island of Aiaia (Corsica or Sardinia … I was imagining Corsica). She turns some of them into pigs, but Odysseus convinces her to change them back. She becomes a sort of ambiguous ally, giving him advice about how to handle the Moving Rocks, the Sirens, and Charybdis and Scylla.

Of course, there is always more detail to the story. Miller has researched this deeply, and I appreciate her portrait of where Circe came from. Circe is the daughter of the sun, Helios, who is a titan, and his one legitimate wife. This makes her the sister of Pasiphaë, wife of King Minos (ahem), and also of Aeetes, father of the witch Madea.

Given that she is divine, Circe gets a front-row seat to nearly all the earliest myths. She meets Prometheus in person. She watches the whole ugly episode with Minotaur go down (this is centuries before Odysseus). Time passes quickly for her. At the same time, she is sort of fascinated by mortals. On the plus side, this means she does not view them as disposable, as most of her relatives do. On the down side, she at first fails to see them as a threat.

Near the end of the book, she has this to say.

I thought once that gods are the opposite of death, but I see now they are more dead than anything, for they are unchanging, and can hold nothing in their hands.

p. 385

Though a page-turner, Circe was a heavy read emotionally. As you might expect, it really stinks to be an ancient Greek god or Titan. You are likely to have horrible parents, for example. The hardest part for me was finding out what we might have suspected by reading between the lines: that Odysseus was actually a real [censored], and that things did not go happily after he made it home to Ithaka. Thankfully, Miller does not leave us there but introduces at least one good man and gives the book’s ending a faint note of redemption.

Based on this read, I think I will try The Song of Achilles if I come across it. Miller’s writing is not ideological. It is extremely tragic, with heartbreaking near misses and so forth, but that is actually how these ancient stories go.

Behold, Three Books

On By Jennifer Mugrage3 Comments

Hunting Time, a Colter Shaw Novel, by Jeffery Deaver.

By the way, it’s “hunting TIME,” not “HUNTing time.” The sense is not “time to hunt,” but “we don’t just save time, we hunt it down.”

This is a very professional modern thriller and the author has tons of blurbs on the back from other modern thriller writers. The plot was intricate, the pacing tense, and the characters were distinctive enough to keep them straight and give some emotional momentum to the story. There was also at least one major twist that I did not see coming, and that I really thought was clever.

Possibly the best-drawn “character” is the Midwestern city of Ferrington, the picture of urban blight but without the glamour of a big coastal city. Ferrington used to be an industrial capital, but then many industries left the city, leaving people out of work. Now the place seems to be nothing but drugs, crime, and despair. There are lot of chain-link-fence-surrounded empty lots filled with trash, long streets full of abandoned warehouses, and there is a badly polluted river. The ugliness of the scenes described rises to the level of beauty. The cops are corrupt in some cases and spread too thin in others. I think the name Ferrington is supposed to remind us of Ferguson, Missouri, and this is where we start to get into the book’s flaws.

Though Deaver mostly sticks to the story, when laying his scenes he makes sure to get in occasional digs at the reader. Bigots are everywhere. Trans is good, gay is good. We capitalize Black but not white. Stuff like that. Oh, and of course, capitalists are the one who ruined Ferrington in the first place.

My other issue with this book is the female characters. They’re not terrible, but … but … well. They are just missing a certain je-ne-sais-quois. For example, one of the point of view characters is a woman, Allison Parker. Deaver uses third person limited with her and with Colter Shaw, the sleuth. When we are inside Allison’s point of view, he frequently calls her Parker. That is just a bit confusing. It makes it sound like there is another person in the room. I am pretty sure that most women don’t think of themselves by their last name. Although maybe men do. Which is really the problem: All Deaver’s “female” characters (he has three main ones in this book) think more like men. Allison Parker is an engineering genius, very organized, very no-nonsense. Her daughter Hannah is a math genius, also no-nonsense. Sonja Nilsson is a former military operative (you guessed it, no-nonsense!) who is willing to sleep with Shaw after having known him for a day or two.

This is not a problem with Deaver alone. Many, many female authors write “male” characters who think and talk like women. It’s just awfully difficult to get into the head of the opposite sex.

Finally, there are occasional little things that made me scratch my head. “Seahorses can be sensuous.” (They can?) “Five-high.” (It’s high-five.) Nilsson lost forty pounds, and kept it off, in order to go into witness protection. (Oh, I didn’t realize it was that easy. Especially since she left the military at the same time! But, as we all know, the only thing keeping fat people from losing weight is the want-to. Eye roll)

Due to all these little flaws, and because the reveal of the villain was less satisfying than I had hoped, I give this book three out of five stars.

Tomb of the Golden Bird, by Elizabeth Peters

This was pure fun.

The Emersons are a family of British Egyptologists. Emerson, “Father of Curses,” the paterfamilias, is married to Amelia Peabody, whom he calls “Peabody.” This hot couple began their Egyptian adventures back in the Victorian era, but now it is 1922. Their grown son, nicknamed Ramses, is married and has children, and the Emersons have a large, motley household of employees, longtime family friends, relatives, and adoptees, both Egyptian and British. They have returned to Luxor, Egypt, for yet another season of digging. Of course, there are going to be capers, skullduggery, and so forth, and all the Emersons will be involved up to their elbows. Will they be deceived by Emerson’s half-brother Sethos? Will they foil an international plot? Most importantly, will they ever get a peek into the intact tomb that was discovered–technically, by Emerson–and is now being opened by the odious Carter?

This series is exquisitely researched. About 60% of the story is told in the first person by Amelia Peabody, in near-perfect late Victorian/Edwardian language. Scattered everywhere are gems like this one:

… I identified several other [party] guests as journalists. I can always spot them by the bulges in their coat pockets which indicate the presence of notebooks, and by their predatory looks. Messieurs Bradstreet of the New York Times and Bancroft of the Daily Mail were known to me personally (through no fault of mine).

p. 241

The other 40% of the story is told in third person from the point of view of Ramses, who is a quieter character than his colorful parents, but it also includes gems:

He had thought of several innocent explanations for David’s behavior, including the one he had given. It was understandable that [David] might feel the need to be alone; the family en masse or individually could be wearing.

p. 254

I originally came to this series hoping for ancient Egyptian mystical mysteries. It’s not that. It’s more of a romp. Much of this book felt like following the Keystone Cops, but eventually there did turn out to be some twists that gave the whole plot shape and direction. Four out of five stars.

Matchingmaking for Psychopaths, by Tasha Coryell

I picked this up off the New Books shelf at the library. Perhaps I should have left it there, based on the title, but I had read the first few pages and found them engaging. Alas, I returned the book without finishing it. I would have liked there to be at least one main character who I was sure wasn’t a psychopath. A little psychopathology goes a long way.

When I returned the book, the librarian giggled and said, “Oh, that one was silly.” It was indeed silly. But silly and serial murder don’t mix well. At least not for me.

In Which I Read a Romance Novel from 1930

On By Jennifer Mugrage4 Comments

A year or two ago, someone challenged the famous curmudgeon Bookstooge to read Barbara Cartland. This was deliciously absurd, as Barbara Cartland is an incredibly prolific romance author from the last century, whose author picture, lest we forget it, looks like this.

These readalongs are supposed to happen in December.

In December 2024, Bookstooge and his 70,000 followers read Love Saves Day by Barbarba Cartland, which turned out to be essentially an unedited draft that was published after Cartland’s death by her children. Even so, the consensus was that we didn’t hate it as much as we expected to, and that for all its flaws, Cartland is a very professional hand at plotting.

This year, Bookstooge announced that the Cartland of choice was A Rainbow to Heaven. I purchased my copy, and everything was all ready to go. And then, after reading Chapter 3, Bookstooge bailed on us. He had his reasons. You can read them here.

But I am happy to tell you that I finished the book, and boy, did Bookstooge miss out because the plot really heats up after Chapter 3! Below, I will summarize chapter by chapter, and you will see what I saw, that Cartland has the touch when it comes to twists and turns.

And by the way, though this book was published in 1976, it is set in (and, according to the author’s note, written in) 1930.

Chapter 1

We meet Diana Headley, beautiful heiress whose father is a self-made man. We see her go to a party with the other “bright young people,” especially eligible society bachelor Hugo Dalk. We see that they are shallow, good-hearted snobs. We learn that Diana is a celebrity, whose picture is always appearing in magazines.

“I feel morbid,” she told Hugo brightly. “Let’s go and have a drink.”

p. 12

Chapter 2

Hugo proposes to Diana. She brushes him off. We get a little backstory about how this notorious playboy first got the bug for Diana.

Diana manages to get herself invited to the country home of Jack and Loelia Standish, a married couple whom she admires and who seem to represent some stability and kindness in her world. They have an estate called Huntsman’s House in the Malvern hills in Worcestershire. Jack mentions that he has an old army friend name Barry Dunbar who is “one of the most intellectual young men in Europe today.”

Chapter 3

Diana arrives at the beautiful, isolated and peaceful Huntsman’s House.

“So very, very pretty,” Loelia thought. “What a pity she leads such an aimless existence!”

p. 30

We hear more backstory about how Loelia came to marry Jack after a loveless first marriage to a man thirty-five years her senior. We hear how Jack, a sad, cynical soldier in WWI, met Barry Dunbar and was given hope and spiritual elevation by him. We learn that Barry has a project of retrieving obscure Hindu and Buddhist texts and getting them translated into English, and that Jack is helping him with funds.

Then we meet Barry himself. He is not impressed with Diana, and relates an incident in which he caught “three native boys” looking at a copy of Tatler, in which Diana appeared wearing a crazy costume that featured a bikini and top hat. Diana is embarrassed but tries to defend herself. Loelia is disappointed that Barry does not like Diana.

Chapter 4

Still at Huntsman’s House, we find that Barry has a way with both children and animals. Sitting in the morning room, intending to write a letter, Diana overhears a conversation between Jack and Barry. They discuss Barry’s travels, how great Buddhism is, and the need for a spiritual awakening in modern England, which apparently Barry’s Buddhist texts are going to catalyze. Jack presses Barry about whether he will ever marry. Barry admits to wanting a son, but doubts whether any woman could put up with his traveling lifestyle. He reiterates that he doesn’t find Diana attractive because her “mind is completely unused.”

The group walks to The Castle, a building on the Standishes’ land. They have fixed up a portion of it so guests can stay there. Eager to impress Barry, Diana asks for a copy of one of his books, and he lends her A Way. Diana finds it “extraordinarily beautiful,” but hard to understand.

Reflecting on the emptiness of her life of luxury, Diana returns to London, where she encounters her friends Cecil and Bebe,

a small vivacious blonde of her own age, who had startled London with her debut, and had continued to keep it considerably surprised ever since.

p. 51

Bebe and Cecil insist on Diana’s throwing a party, which they will organize. Hugo shows up and is disappointed that he can’t spend the evening with Diana alone.

Chapter 5

Diana and her large group of friends move from restaurant to theater to bar, drinking oceans of champagne and wasting lots of fine food which they can’t appreciate. Eventually, in the wee hours of the morning, Hugo brings Diana back to her London house. He wants to come in and “talk to her” (get an answer about his proposal), but she puts him off until tomorrow night.

Before going up to bed, Diana sees a light on in her father’s study and finds the body of her father, who has shot himself.

After the police are called and Diana’s brother Jimmy shows up, it is revealed that their father got into serious financial trouble and shot himself rather than declare bankruptcy. He was so active in the financial sphere that his ruin causes a crash, and causes many other people to lose their fortunes as well.

Chapter 6

There is a media frenzy making Diana’s father, Robert Headley, the villain. He is portrayed as intentionally looting the public, and luxuriousness of his house is exaggerated.

Quite normally decorated rooms were described as though they were treasure-houses of barbaric splendor.

p. 69

Diana and Jimmy lose everything, but the lawyer encourages Diana to keep her jewels, which she may be able to sell later. She assumes that Hugo will now not want to marry her. She boards a train and goes back to Huntsman’s House for a few days to get away from the publicity and to collect herself.

Chapter 7

Staying at the The Castle on Jack and Loelia’s property, Diana gets a letter from her brother Jimmy. He has taken a job at a garage, with the understanding that he will work under an assumed name so as not to damage the garage’s reputation. The other mechanics can tell that he’s upper-class, and they don’t respect him until he gets into a fight. Diana realizes that she does not have any marketable skills. Although she can ride horses, dance, and speaks several languages, she is not equipped to teach any of these things.

Barry catches her sitting outdoors, crying, and tells her that she still has “the only thing that matters … Courage.”

A friend of Diana’s finds a potential job her. She is to be a “companion” to the daughter of a socially climbing family called the Schnibers. This is quite a change for Diana, but she decides to take the job. Once in their home, she sees how Mrs. Schniber raises money and contributes to a lot of charities, but the wealthy patrons she is helping still don’t treat her with courtesy, much to her frustration.

The Schnibers go to Monte Carlo for the summer, and Diana accompanies them. At one point, she gets away from her duties to have supper with a nice young man whose eye she has caught. He reveals that he lost his fortune in the Headley Crash and will be starting work when he gets back to London. Diana excuses herself before he can realize who she is.

Also in Monte Carlo, the Schniber family bump into Hugo. Hugo is shocked to see Diana in reduced circumstances. He still seems to like her and want to get alone with her, but Mrs. Schniber has hopes that Hugo will pursue her own daughter.

Chapter 8

The Schnibers and Diana return to London. Diana sells her jewels to help her brother Jimmy pay off a debt that he became liable for while he was still at the university. Diana and Jimmy become closer, and each is impressed with the other’s resilience.

Diana encounters the young man from Monte Carlo, but this time he knows who she is and treats her coldly.

Diana goes to Huntsman’s House for the weekend, where she tells Jack and Loelia about her new job and begins to find it funny. She is happier than when she was wealthy. Jack admits to Loelia that he misjudged Diana.

Loelia and Diana discuss love, marriage, and Barry’s tragic backstory. Barry is unexpectedly also staying with the Standishes, and by the end of her weekend there, Diana has realized that she is in love with Barry. She is surprised by the intensity of this new sensation, and she feels more alive than she ever has.

Chapter 9

Diana goes back to working for the Schnibers in London. She remains obsessed with Barry. Hugo has continued to call at the Schnibers, and Mrs. Schniber has finally realized that his interest in is Diana.

While out shopping, Diana bumps into Loelia, who mentions in passing that Barry has joined a Buddhist monastery. Diana is devastated and moves through her days in a daze.

Mrs. Schniber notices the change in Diana and concludes that it is because she is wasting away with love for Hugo. She encourages Hugo to press his suit. He does, and Diana, feeling that nothing matters anymore, agrees to marry him.

Chapter 10

In the midst of preparations for her wedding, Diana hears that Barry is no longer at the Buddhist monastery. He spent only three months there as a monk in order to prove his seriousness and gain access to one of their priceless manuscripts. She flees London, leaving letters for Hugo and Mrs. Schniber, and winds up in a village that she picked essentially at random.

Diana spends a few months living with and working for a very poor young couple, Ted and Rose, who run a roadside garage and a small tea room. She is happy living in poverty and obscurity, but she is not eating well.

On a stormy night, Diana stays with Rose, who is in labor, while Ted goes off on his motorcycle to fetch the doctor. Ted crashes in the rain. Rose delivers a baby boy, and both she and Diana are hospitalized.

Diana has caught pneumonia from running around in the rain. In her fever, she continues raving about whether the doctor will come in time. The doctor can’t identify who Diana is from her possessions, but he finds her book A Way, which has “Huntsman’s House” written on the inside. He contacts Jack and Loelia, who bring Diana to recuperate at their home.

Chapter 11

Barry comes to visit, where he spends time with the thin and weak Diana. He tells her that he is going to go to his house, on an isolated island off the coast of Cornwall, to write a book. Diana decides to risk everything and pursue him there.

She manages to get Barry’s address out of Loelia, who admits, “Somehow … I’ve always felt that you and Barry would suit each other, even in the days when you were a very frivolous person.” (p. 150)

Diana hops on a train, charters a fishing boat, and manages to beat Barry to his house. It is beautiful, peaceful, and unique, with a vast ocean view and two Chinese servants. There, she announces to the shocked Barry that she is going to stay with him. After ascertaining that she is not planning a large, wild party, and that she is the only guest, Barry finally figures out that Diana is in love with him. He reciprocates. The two of them enter directly into Nirvana.

Misanthropic Quote: A Very Parfait Knight

On By Jennifer MugrageLeave a comment

Winter got this reaction a lot when he killed people. He was a well-spoken man, a man of taste and culture, a gentle man in many ways and given to fine feelings. Cold-blooded killing was not the sort of thing people expected from him. Unless they were very insightful, they did not understand the complete absence of sentimentality in his makeup. He knew there were some men so low that only death could improve their personalities. He did not hesitate to improve them when the need arose.

–After That, the Dark, by Andrew Klavan, p. 298