snowgood posted: " I can remember the first time I was introduced to this story. It was in the last few months of my primary school education, that had precious few moments of encouragement. Having moved from the Cotswolds to "The Big Smoke" I was painfully aware"
I can remember the first time I was introduced to this story.
It was in the last few months of my primary school education, that had precious few moments of encouragement.
Having moved from the Cotswolds to "The Big Smoke" I was painfully aware that my peers had already enjoyed a better education than myself, and despite having passed my 11+ I was miles behind the rest of my adopted class.
Our teacher was up front reading, and I recall a sense of awe. Nothing like this had been read from the front in my last school. Maybe the vicar at Uley C of E School would bring Bible stories alive, but here was something different.
Despite being Book 2 in the Narnia Chronicles this was the first written by C.S.Lewis. As an adult and with a better knowledge of the author I'm struck by what I don't see within these pages.
The hide and seek game in a large rambling house and a wardrobe are the gateway to a new world that Lucy discovers by accident, and Edmund finds soon after.
It is a world devoid of true adults, a land full of mystical and well known creatures which perhaps illustrate the absence of grown ups in the author's life.
The Belfast boy lost his Mum early in life, and after first exploring imaginary worlds in Boxen with his brother this book is the stepping point into something with multiple layers and a brilliant narrative.
As an Oxford graduate, and classics scholar with incredible intellectual scope Lewis somehow manages to wrap up the life, death and resurrection into something wonderfully accessible.
If I'd written it the Stone Table sequence may have "got the chop", but Lewis doesn't pussyfoot around such profound matters as substitutional death and uses Lucy and Susan as the vehicles to portray a profound insight into the agony of the garden.
My guess is I've read this book 5 or 6 times, but I still love the place that girls have here, true to the Gospel story it is the girls (women) who are first on the scene as the Saviour rises!
If you know the book at all what passages mean the most to you?
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