Lewis sets his retelling of this myth in the fictional kingdom of Glome, contemporary with Hellenistic Greece, and he tells his version from the perspective of one of Psyche’s sisters, whom he names Orual.

Mournful Psyche is left with the tasks of overcoming jealous Venus, avenging herself on her sisters, and regaining Cupid’s love. When she does, Cupid awakens, rebukes her, and flies away. They convince the gullible Psyche that her husband is a terrible beast and tell her to light a lamp in the night as he sleeps so that she can see him. Psyche convinces Cupid to reluctantly bring her sisters to his palace to visit, and they become fiercely jealous of their sister’s golden palace, supernaturally delicious food, and divine husband. He comes to her every night in the darkness, but he forbids her from ever seeing his face. Instead, Cupid falls in love with her himself and has her whisked away to his golden palace as his wife. Venus, jealous of Psyche’s beauty, sends her son Cupid to the mountaintop to make Psyche fall in love with the worst of all men. Because no men feel worthy to marry her, her father the king consults an oracle who tells him to leave Psyche on a mountain since she is not meant for any mortal man. Referring to the earliest extant version of the myth in Lucius Apuleius’s Metamorphoses, Lewis tells that Psyche is the youngest of three princesses and so captivatingly beautiful that people neglect to worship Venus and worship her instead. Lewis provides a synopsis of the myth in an appended note. The subtitle of the book is A Myth Retold, referring to the myth of Cupid and Psyche. Till We Have Faces may be more obscure than some of Lewis’s other works, but its complexity and depth make it a challenging read for all the right reasons. An author’s lasting enthusiasm about a work can, I think, indicate similar quality.

If the professor is enthusiastic about teaching the class, there’s a very good chance it will be particularly enjoyable and worthwhile for the students. I compare it to the way I’ve been excited every time when, on the first day of a college class, a professor lets slip that this class - the one that I’m in right now - is his or her favorite of the quarter.

Lewis said he considered Till We Have Faces his best-written book. It is, however, the one Lewis called his favorite. Yet beyond the widely read Chronicles of Narnia, it’s still a better wager that any given person has read Mere Christianity, or The Screwtape Letters, or The Great Divorce, and probably even Lewis’s space trilogy, rather than Till We Have Faces. The recent movies based on two of the Narnia books have probably given them a secure place as Lewis’s best known.

Till we have faces review