Surprised by Joy Davidman

The late-in-life romance of C.S. Lewis and Joy Davidman must be one of the most famous literary love stories of the 20th century. Lewis, a respected authority on Medieval and Renaissance literature and popular author of books about Christianity, and Davidman, a poet and novelist who was a former atheist, former Communist and former Jew who converted to Christianity, have been the subject of numerous books and even a notable film, Shadowlands, starring Anthony Hopkins and Debra Winger.

Yet these accounts have generally been from the point of view of Lewis. We see how she impacted his life. One of the pleasures of Joy: Poet, Seeker, and the Woman Who Captivated C.S. Lewis by Abigail Santamaria is that it reveals how he impacted her life.

Joy's parents were strict and unaffectionate. A less than perfect report card usually meant a slap in the face from her father. Throughout her youth she dreamed of Fairyland, a yearning very much like what Lewis describes in several of his books. She sought her Fairyland in her poetry, in the Communist Party and the Soviet Union (she once idolized Stalin much as she later idolized Lewis) and even in an early form of L. Ron Hubbard's Scientology. She married a fellow Communist, Bill Gresham, also a writer, and they had two sons.

Reading books by C.S. Lewis and experiencing a profound religious experience when, still an atheist, she bowed in desperation to pray, her life was transformed. Bill changed, too, and together they joined a Presbyterian Church, both even becoming officers in the church. Bill was the more commercially successful writer of the pair, selling one of his novels to Hollywood, but he drank too much, once fired a rifle in their house while the boys slept and was sometimes unfaithful.

And then Joy began pursuing Lewis, as if he were her Fairyland. She wrote to him, Lewis responded and a long correspondence began. Then she left for England for several months, supposedly to do research for a book, although her real purpose was to meet Lewis and, if possible, win the heart of this contented bachelor who lived in Oxford with his brother. Despite the fact that her husband was alcoholic and attracted to other women, she left their children in the care of Bill and Renee, Joy's pretty cousin, a woman fleeing her own husband. When Bill and Renee fell in love, Joy portrayed it to Lewis as a betrayal, although Santamaria suggests it may have been her plan all along.

In time Joy took her boys to England, she and Bill divorced and she and Lewis were married twice, once in a civil ceremony and again in a Christian one.

Joy Davidman does not come through as a particularly admirable person even in her own biography, yet the author leaves no suggestion at the end that Lewis was ever deceived or taken advantage of. He loved Joy Davidman with all his heart and grieved deeply after her premature death from cancer. Imperfect though she may have been, she made his own imperfect life seem briefly like Fairyland.