A Severe Mercy
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- ISBN13: 9780060688240
- Condition: New
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Product Description
Beloved, very much moving account of the leader’s marriage, the couple’s search for faith and friendship with C. S. Lewis, and a spiritual might that sustained Vanauken after his wife’s untimely death.Amazon.com Review
A Severe Mercy, by Sheldon Vanauken, is a heart-rending like tale described by its leader as “the spiritual autobiography of a like rather than of the lovers.” Vanauken chronicles the birth of a powerful pagan like borne out of the relationship he shares with his wife, Davy, and describes the growth of their relationship and the dreams that they share. As a symbol of their like, they name their dream schooner the Grey Goose, “for the grey goose, if its mate is killed flies on alone and never takes another.”
While studying at Oxford, Sheldon and Davy renovate a friendship with C.S. Lewis, under whose influence and with much intellectual scrutiny they accept the Christian doctrine. As their devotion to God intensifies, Sheldon realizes that he is no longer Davy’s primary like–God is. Within this discovery starts a brewing jealousy.
Before long after, Davy buys a fatal illness. After her death Sheldon embarks on an intense experience of grief, “to find the meaning of it, taste the whole of it … to learn from sorrow whatever it had to teach.” Through painstaking reveries, he comes to learn the meaning of “a mercy as severe as death, a severity as merciful as like.” He learns that her death “had these results: It brought me as nothing else could do to know and end my jealously of God. It saved her faith from assault. …And it saved our like from perishing.”
Replete with 18 letters from C.S. Lewis, A Severe Mercy addresses some of the universal questions that surround faith–the being of God and the reasons behind tragedy. –Jacque Holthusen
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I wrote a review of this book a year ago, but it has been deleted. My opinion is unchanged. It is shallow, sentimental, and exhibitionist–a pathetic example of what passes for profundity in our time. It also attributes remarks to C S Lewis that no one who has read his books (or knew him)would regard as accurate. I earnestly hope it will soon go out of print and vanish into the obscurity it so richly deserves.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
What’s permanently appealing about this book is how it serves as a litmus test for the all-purpose character of persons reading it, and the unspoken gender assumptions that come from it. From a woman’s perspective, this book is palatable only by persons who see a woman’s place in the same manner as persons who espouse a conservative christian view – a woman is an object of worship, but her place in the relationship between God, spouse and wife, she is clearly to submit. To me, it is so incredibly apparent that as she has her conversion experience, she starts to fall out of like with Sheldon. Awoken to the unpleasantness of the world that is seen through God’s eyes, Sheldon sees this as an enlightened conscience, whereas many women today may see it as ‘high dissapointment’ at a faith system that as a replacement for of bringing her a promised grace, tears her into a judeo-christian framework of reality that is harsh, unloving and highly sexist. Sheldon’s like before and after the conversion is adult infatuation, and I find it telling that so many men view this as a compelling like tale – they are unable to see past a woman as an object.
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5
First of all, let me say that I am a Christian woman…undoubtably the audience for whom this book was written. It is truly one of the worst books I’ve ever had the displeasure of reading. If I hadn’t told a friend I would read it, I never would have slogged through the sickning, simpering, sentimental, gooey self-satisfying portrait the leader thinks of as a like tale. The characters are completely self-absorbed, selfish and disfunctional. The spouse places his wife, albeit dead, on a pedistal so absurdly madonna-esque that as a replacement for of feeling sorry for his loss, I wanted to throw the book through a window and run away….quick. Don’t waste your time.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
This could be an example of the over-wrought, hyper-dramatized like tale exemplifying what Denis de Rougemont warned against in his analysis of Like in the Western World. VanAuken writes about how he and his wife insisted on reading all the same books together (out loud) and then sailing around in their sailboat, analyzing the intensity of their like. Then she becomes terminally ill and the floodgates of more lover-analysis open wider still.
There is something surreal about this book, clarified perhaps by vast inherited wealth on the leader’s side of the family tree. Two college students who were captivated by this book over 10 years ago faked their disappearance to run away together, and finished up slinging hash in some deli in LaJolla, California, and then had to come home again–proof of the need for a lot of cash to really live like VanAuken describes. They told the newspapers they were inspired by this book. I guess their inspiration could have been worse.
So this book is a prescription for escapism, in addition to whatever else it is.
Reader’s Rating: 1 / 5
There are two scenes in this book that come directly from movies of the late 60’s and early 70’s. The scene where he stands up and fires the gun at the Japanese Bomber is just like the scene in Patton where George C. Scott fires at the German plane. The scene where their boat sinks and they try to swim to shore is similar to a scene in a James Bond movie. Since these movies were well loved at the time of the writing, this made me marvel if the book were a hoax altogether, but there is an ego-maniacal consistency about it that makes me reflect that Sheldon just imagined himself as the characters in the movies and transposed that into his memory of reality. This book is terrible on so many levels that I don’t know where to start.
Let me start by adage that I am not cynical or bitter. I am a Christian, and I judge in like and am even open to sentimental tales. C.S. Lewis’s tribute to his late wife, A Grief Experimental, is an brilliant example of what a tribute should be. Let’s start with the C.S. Lewis factor, the book’s main selling point (lacking persons letters, it would have never made it to print with a legitimate publisher)– Van, in his self-absorbed, delusional manner is infatuated with the fact that He knew C.S. Lewis and could call him a “friend.” Lewis, being a kind-hearted soul and wishing to help the young Van in the process of converting to Christianity, was tolerant in his words to him. But even Lewis got disgusted with him at times and that is apparent in an underspoken (British) way. Lewis speaks favorably of one of Sheldon’s terrible poems (they are all terrible– the only poet I have ever read who was any worse was William Topaz McGonagall, the worst poet in the history of the English language.) but hints that the very mode in which the poem is written is outdated.
Sheldon downplays the money factor, but the fact is, he was a rich, rich, upperclass boy. He was a braggart and a condescending fop. Davy was a strong willed girl from a family tree that had hit on hard times. Get the picture?
The scene where he demanded that she tell him what his mother had said was sickening and frightening. Sure, he bent her to his will, the spoiled small brat, but that only shows how delusional he was. Poor girls will place up with a lot from a rich rescuer.
Does anyone really reflect it’s possible to just go live on a boat with only a magazine writer’s income? No way. Where did he get the money to have the boat built in the first place? His father was at least to some extent restrained in forking the cash over, but if you follow the tale closely, you see that after his father’s death, hiw allowance must have increased. He was able to wrangle money from dear ancient mom with ease– thus he got to go to Oxford. She eventually had to sell the estate, the poor woman.
The writing is of the worst and most pretentious kind. I really laughed out loud at some of his awkwardly constructed sentences.
Eventually Davy sickens of their life together and converts back to Christianity– no doubt she had run from God after her father’s death. He was a minister and, no doubt, a excellent man, and I’m sure she had been bitter.
But back to the point of the tale– A excellent-looking woman who can keep herself cool can wrap a man around her small finger and keep him infatuated for years by giving a small and then withdrawing her emotions a small. This is what was obviously going on. We really don’t learn ANYTHING about her that speaks with clarity or reality. She was a myth to Sheldon even before she died. He had the money and an overactive imagination. She had the sweet face.
I was really amused at how in like with himself he was and how he wrote of his exploits on planes or in the military in such glowing terms– predictable of the spoiled, upperclass brats of the time.
Well, I must stop. Don’t be taken in by this book. I mean it. It’s really terrible. Well, okay, maybe if you want a excellent laugh, read it, but additional than that, it’s worse than even most of what you read from the Victorian era.
Oh, wait– I cracked up about how he said he had permanently believed in honor and decency and was proud to be a gentleman, then later confesses that he fornicated with Davy before they were married.
Reader’s Rating: 2 / 5