Laurabelle's Blog

C.S. Lewis' novel Till We Have Faces: A Myth Retold is a retelling of the myth of Cupid and Psyche. It is a lovely and haunting telling of a story that I, mythology geek that I am, never found at all compelling. It's always fascinating when these well-known stories can surprise me; it's not what happens, but how. So I won't give away the ending, but I'll just say that in a very strange way, it reminds me of Memento with the way it leaves me hanging, having read all the words or seen all the action and still wondering what the real story is.

P.S. Someone wrote on a sticky note inside the back cover of my library copy: The past is unchangeable but how it is seen is not, making all future pasts at once thrilling and changeable.

For years I've been meaning to read Mary Stewart's Arthurian novels, and then this fall The Crystal Cave, The Hollow Hills, and The Last Enchantment practically fell into my lap in used bookstores. (How could I not give them a loving home?) I finished The Crystal Cave last night.

I'm kind of disappointed to find that I don't find this book as great as everyone else seems to. It was a fun enough read, and I did like learning about some of the myths about Merlin, but I'm not sure I like having him demystified. Stewart makes Merlin a sort of juvenile underdog hero (growing a bastard, then finding his father and eventually his role in Britain's destiny), which is very unsatisfying to me. Sure, Merlin must have been born at some point, but the timeline of Stewart's story makes him, I think, altogether too young when Arthur is born. I'm also very unsatisfied by his magical development and by the justification for his having magical powers. The powers Merlin is supposed to have go far beyond simple Sight, ingenuity, and a bit of engineering genius. Stewart demystifies Merlin and brings him wholly into the human realm, but I don't think that's where he belongs.

However, I did like the way she dealt with the events around Arthur's conception, namely the death of Ygraine's husband on that same night; that's an aspect of Merlin with which I was never comfortable. On the other hand, the dual nature of Merlin, both benevolent and sinister, are crucial to his legend. Merlin is not human, and to make him so is to make him not-Merlin. It's sort of like saying Christ was just a clever con artist, except that fewer people will threaten to kill you for saying it.