Book Bug: The Great Divorce
This is my second attempt to read (and enjoy) Lewis’ writing. Years ago, I attempted to read Mere Christianity twice and it didn’t work quite well. I blame English as my second language but a lot of it I think came from lack of discipline to finish it. Afterall, I read Narnia twice and loved it even more the second time around. So in the slower (wedding photographer’s) season of December, I finished this book in three seatings.
Before starting the book, I already had an idea how the plot or story will go. However, Lewis’ introduction really helped that this is just a fantasy story with a moral take on in the end. By no means any of the specifics in the book is meant to be a revelation of how the afterworld is going to be.
If you are a faithful blog reader of ours, you are probably familiar with our faith and belief already. For the moment, I just wanted to ask you to be open minded whatever your belief is as I also read other books written by Buddhist and other believers with no judgment. By no means I wrote this review here to judge what your personal choices are and the same when I read books written by authors with different path of belief. If you aren’t a Christian and you are looking for a great book, simply written and easily understood with daily happenings… This is a book that I would definitely recommend you to pick up tomorrow!
While reading this book, I was reminded the reason why I loved reading the Narnia years ago. Lewis’ style of writing is like a breeze and yet the moral behind it will drown you in a thousand gallons of sea water. I really liked how he started the book with a chapter about two men who were friends on earth. And how one of them was surprised that the other one, who is a murderer, ended up in heaven while he, in hell. It was a tragic ending story as the man who was from hell refused to repent and let go. I right away relate to the story as sometimes it’s hard to forgive a family/church member’s action which often times resulted in an ended relationship. How hard it is to see that this is none of our rights to judge where someone should end up be or whether he/she should be given a second chance….
The whole book covered conversations between two people, one from heaven and one from hell. The one from heaven will always try to enlighten the other one how this and that resulted to where they were at the end of life. It’s as simple as that but in reality… not as much! I believe you will enjoy reading through this book as much as I did especially if you have vivid imagination of what you read on paper. It’s as good as that! Here are a few quotes I found lovely and I wanted to revisit one day through this post:
One of my favorite books 🙂
Sounds like a great read. I’ll have to put that on my wishlist.
Awesome! I’ll have to add this one to my list!
I’m not big on religion, but i have to admit this does sound like a good read. I’m a HUGE fan of C.S.Lewis, i grew up with the Narnia books like most kids and now I’m trying to encourage my son to read them too. Thanks for this book suggestion, i will look it up.