Becoming Mrs. Lewis - a book review

 

Becoming Mrs. Lewis by Patti Callahan is historical fiction book based on the life of Helen Joy Davidman Gresham, who later became the wife of C.S. Lewis.  

Joy was born in New York in 1915 to Jewish parents who were very critical of her, causing her to feel as though her worth was based on how she measured up to their standards.  An example of this is if her report cards were not straight A's she was criticized.  A curious side note...she scored 150 on an IQ test, she finished high school at the age of 14 and entered Hunter College in the Bronx at the age of 15, earning her BA at the age of 19 in 1935.  In 1936 she received her Masters in English Literature while she was also teaching school.  Also in 1936, Joy had several of her poems published.  She decided at that point to resign her teaching position and started writing and editing full time.

Joy was a sickly child with having thyroid problems, crooked spine, scarlet fever, and anemia.  At one point when she was at Hunter College she began to question the American economic system after witnessing a hungry orphan jumping off a roof and she actually joined the communist party in 1938 for a period of time.

Another area of her life in which Joy always felt put down by her parents was her physical appearance.  Her parents were always comparing her to her cousin Renee, who they said was more beautiful and gracious than Joy.  

The negativity in Joy's life caused her to look for "love" in all of the wrong places and she married William Gresham in 1942, thinking she had actually found true love.  Gresham was also a writer, but also became an unfaithful and abusive alcoholoic husband and father to Joy and their two boys.  One day in 1946, Bill called Joy and told him that he was having a nervous breakdown and he didn't know when he would return home.  Joy suffered a defeated emotional state after that.  She went to the boys' nursery and knelt on the floor and realized a Presence there.  It was at that point that she realized she was not in charge of her own fate, as she had believed as an atheist.  Bill did return home and when he did they began as a couple to look to religion for answers for their troubled marriage.  At one point, they wrote a letter to C.S. Lewis asking him questions because he had once been an atheist.  

It was through that initial letter, which Jack (Lewis) did respond to, that a three year correspondence between Jack and Joy began.  Joy became quite ill and the doctor told Bill that Joy needed a change or she was going to die.  And Joy's first trip to England came about.  She went in search of medical help, to do research for a book she was working on, and to meet Jack.  

Her cousin Renee, who she had always been compared to as a child, had fled to Bill and Joy's home in refuge from her abusive husband and when the doctor told Bill that there had to be a change for Joy, Renee convinced Joy to go to England while she remained there to take care of the house and the children.

Those are the circumstances under which Joy met Jack for the first time.  I would love to go into detail here about how things went for them, but, honestly, if I did that you, the reader, would have everything spoiled for you.  

Before closing this review,  I want to share that I decided I don't really care for historical fiction when I realized that all of the letters between Jack and Joy in the book were not their actual letters.  Their actual letters were destroyed so the author did not have them to go by.  That was somewhere around page 84.  But I kept reading and before I knew it, I had finished the almost 400 pages of the book in two days!  

I have been a C.S. Lewis fan for many years and this American woman that had so overtaken his heart drove me to dig deeper.  I watched Shadowlands.  There are two versions of it...a two hour and a 50 minute version.  The 50 minute version of it depicts Joy as a more quiet individual, whereas the two hour version depicts her probably in more true to her character as an American woman raised in the Bronx - New York City.  And it is also the version that her youngest son, Douglas Gresham, was involved in the making.  

From there, I started watching some interviews of the author, Patti Callahan.  The one I enjoyed the most of those was one done at C.S. Lewis College.  I think the reason that one was my favorite is because Patti responded to a question from someone in the audience about the "fiction" involved.  Patti explained how she went about writing the book.  She began with the "bones"...which are the facts, such as when they were born, died, published different works, etc.  Then she said the next layer is the skin...which she described as the emotions of the people in the book.  She referred to the many works of both Joy and Jack that made their emotions very clear.  The last layer is how she "dressed" the characters and she said that is where things like the letters between the two of them came about.  She said she prefers to think of it as her being "inspired" rather than "imagining " them because she had so much material from so many sources and interviews she did with other people that it was easy to be inspired about what they would have written to one another.

I also watched several interviews done by different people with Douglas Gresham, Joy's youngest son.  He and Jack became quite close, especially after Joy died from cancer.  In the interviews he was asked about the book Becoming Mrs. Lewis by Patti Callahan and he said it was a very well written book...that there were a couple of minor errors, but overall quite well written.  Patti had had no contact with him prior to the book being published, but they have become good friends since.

I know there are mixed reviews on how this was received, but I have to say that I enjoyed the book in spite of the negativity involved.  I read it with an open mind because it's like when we are in relationship with others in our lives.  We can't just write someone off because they may view certain aspects of life differently than we do.  Joy was definitely a high spirited woman, but when she came to the Lord, and the relationship she developed with Jack her life's views changed and I found her to be quite relatable.