Book of the Month

 

I have a plan to read assigned books each month. Last month was Archaeology of Knowledge. This month a love story seemed appropriate, so I chose Joy, Poet, Seeker, and Woman Who Captivated C.S. Lewis, by Abigail Santamaria. I read a biography of Joy in my teens and found it lacking in real information. This book is better than that. Joy’s life is fully fleshed out starting in her teens. The voice of the biographer is a pained kind of neutral that seldom sympathizes with her subject. It is impressive that Santamaria wrote such a good book without enthusiasm. I would say perhaps it is because she wrote without judgement, but she does judge, a lot. 

I liked Joy in spite of her biographer. Living in a time when brilliance in women was at best tolerated she tried to keep herself going while heroically saving Bill Gresham the burden of being a house dad even though they were both Communists at the time. I liked her poetry and would like to read more of it. I liked how scrappy she was. I liked her enough to wonder if she would have liked me.