Book review: The Great Divorce by C S Lewis

*Disclaimer* This was originally a book report for english credit, so if it sounds like a book report, it's a book report. This will make it sound slightly naive, so bear with me.

“The sane would do no good if they made themselves mad to help madmen.”
― C.S. Lewis, The Great Divorce

The Great Divorce by C S Lewis is a fiction / theological fantasy novel. It has become one of my favorite religious books so far. I highly respect the author and all of his works that I have read. It was published in 1944 in a newspaper, and soon after in book form.
The basic storyline of this book: a man has just died and is taking a bus to the afterlife. He meets many interesting people on the bus, but settles with talking to a very smart man who thinks he knows everything. When he arrives, they are in a dark street with lots of barren houses. Over the course of many conversations, observations, and experiences, the man finds out that this is “hell”, or just where everyone else goes. It consists of endless houses. This is because people would build houses, and then start fighting with neighbors. They would then move outward and build a new house, so on and so forth for thousands of years until you can't find an end to the houses.
The man then got on another bus that was taking them up to a field. Or he thought it was up. It is later explained that he was not going up- he was growing. The “hell” or dark town was actually microscopic, with the real world being much larger. Once they arrived, many were unable to leave the bus because the ‘reality’ was completely solid while they were still ghost like, meaning that the grass cut through their feet and the rain was like bullets, tearing through them. I quote I like from this section of the book: “reality is harsh to the feet of shadows.”
Many people started coming from the mountains- great, glorious people that were glowing and perfectly solid. Many had robes, and many had no clothing at all. All were young and healthy powerful, to the point that many ghosts couldn’t even be near them. These people came and tried to invite the ghost people to join them up in the mountain. They told them that the more they accepted it, the closer they got to the mountain, the more solid they became and the less it hurt to walk. But it took them choosing to go, the people could not force them. The rest of the book consists of many different stories of people being invited, chastened or coaxed towards this “heaven”. He then wakes up, and realizes the whole thing was a dream.
I found this book very inspirational because of the truth I found in it. I can pull so many quotes that I have written down from these pages that spoke to me. There were many times where it was almost a slap in the face. For example, there was a ghost woman talking to a solid man (whom she had obviously known in their earthly life) about her son, who was up in the mountains. After a long conversation, and her excessive begging to see her son, it was concluded that she loved her son too much. You wouldn't see that as a sin, but the problem was that she ‘loved’ him so much that she truly didn't love him at all- she loved the idea of him, the fact that she cared for him. She loved being in charge of someone, being their only source of refuge, saying that he was HER son. In her pleadings, she said many things like “he needs me”, “let me take care of him”, “he is MY son, how dare you keep him from me.” It was a very self-centered idea, to the point that it wasn’t love at all, it was pride.

The way Lewis puts everything together- the way he words things, and captures your attention- made it almost impossible to put down. I highly suggest reading this book.