Abigail Santamaria

Joy Davidman spent her life searching for heaven on earth, and she found it just before her death from cancer at the age of 45, in her unlikely marriage to Christian apologist C.S. Lewis. Her last years and the aftermath of her death are well-known due to the popularity of the play and the movie Shadowlands. But Joy Davidman's story prior to her relationship with Lewis has never been told in full before Abigail Santamaria's biography Joy: Poet, Seeker and the Woman who Captivated C.S. show more Lewis.

Santamaria’s portrait of Davidman reveals a restless woman whose life was characterized by contradictions and plagued by disappointments. She was a published poet, novelist, and freelance writer, but she never earned enough money through her writing to support her expensive tastes. As a young woman, she was a committed Communist and supporter of Stalin. Even after she became disillusioned with the Soviet way, she remained a dyed-in-the-wool atheist until her apprehension of a reality beyond the natural world led to her conversion to Christianity. Surprisingly, she saw no conflict between her new faith and her interest in L. Ron Hubbard’s self-help program Dianetics. But eventually she became disenchanted with Hubbard and his followers as well.

Santamaria reveals that Davidman was quite calculating in her approach to C.S. Lewis. Her first marriage was in serious trouble, and she had two young sons who needed her, but these concerns didn't impede her from traveling to England to meet the famous author. Davidman's and Lewis's marriage was at first one of convenience, but then it blossomed into true love. Interestingly, Lewis's literary friends, the Inklings, didn't like his new wife and could not understand what he saw in the dumpy, sarcastic, divorced Jewish-American convert. Lewis loved her deeply, and when she died, he was devastated.

Santamaria's biography of Davidman is insightful and wonderfully written. This is one of the best books I've read in a long time.

Please note that I received an electronic copy of this book to review from NetGalley, but I was not financially compensated in any way. The opinions expressed are my own and are based on my observations while reading this book. show less

I have always been fascinated with who Joy was as a person. She swept Lewis off his feet, and looking at her before Lewis life it seems amazing that the two would hit it off. Some of her characteristics and her keen mind certainly predicted that some sparks would fly, but that they should fall so deeply in love seems more happenstance than logical conclusion. The one thing I thoroughly appreciated in this book was the very even-handed treatment of Joy's first marriage. I had previously show more uncritically accepted the views of Joy's first husband found in Shadowlands, i.e., that he was a tyrannical, physically abusive drunk. This book helped show that he was a much more complex person than that and that their marriage was equally as complicated. Just a very well done biography. show less

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 show more 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. show less

There are some reviews that are easy to write, that almost writes itself. I can finish a book sit down and write without problems. Then there are books, like this one that I kind of know what to write, but still, the process from my head to the actually writing it down takes a bit longer time. And, I'm sorry it's a bit lengthy.

I first learned of Joy Davidman when I for quite many years ago watched Shadowlands. Before that, I had no idea that C.S. Lewis had been married. It was a wonderful show more film, but still it's a film, even though there are truths in the story it has been changed to suit the public. For instance, Joy had two children, two boys and in the movie, she had one. But that they started out as pen pals, that she traveled over to England to see him, that they, in the end, married each other and that she died of cancer is true just as it is in the movie. But the books makes everything sounds so perfect.

But this book gives a much deeper insight into the woman Joy, to her childhood, her growing up, her writing, her time with the communist party and her conversion to Christianity which led her to C.S. Lewis writings and writing together with her husband a letter to C.S. Lewis. She would, in the end, continue to write to C.S. Lewis, but without Bill.

It sounds like a wonderful love story, but in reality, it was a bit more calculated than that. Joy marriage was falling apart, and she practically arranged for her husband to fall in love with her beautiful cousin that came to stay with them. How so? By then she was writing to C.S. Lewis and she was eager to travel and meet him and she left her husband, children, and cousin together and traveled to England to meet C.S. Lewis. She had fallen in love with him trough his letters and she was actually going there to make him fall in love with her. It didn’t go as plan, she did meet him, she spent months in England, but it would take some years before they would truly be a couple. During the time, she and her husband divorced because he had fallen in love with her cousin and she bad mouths him quite bad in letter and to friends. Although, she was hardly a saint herself. she left her sons for months while she was in England and she wrote home to ask for money she then spends on buying clothes and stuff for herself.

But was their love story untrue? No she did love Jack (C.S. Lewis) and he loved her and they got some wonderful years together.

It was not an easy book to read, the first half of the book was a bit tough, it’s very well researched (40% of the book was footnoted), but it was sometimes a bit dry and I must admit that her poems that were in the book, well they didn’t really fascinate me. I often just glanced over them. They just didn't appeal to me. But I was interesting to read about the time period, the rise of the communist party before the McCarty era. I had no idea that Joy was fascinated for a while in life with Dianetics a practice that a man called L. Ron Hubbard had thought of. She got over it, thankfully. She lived in a very interesting time and her life story is quite remarkable.

I think the best part of the book was the last half when she started to write to Jack, and when she got to met and later marry him. Many of his friends were worried for him, like Tolkien. They thought that she was taking advantage of him. Jack had in his youth promised Paddy Moore, a friend, that he would look after his mother if something happened to him and when the friend died in WW1 did he honor the promise and looked after her and many thought that stopped him from ever finding a woman to marry because she looked after him as a mother (he lost his mother as a child) and he looked after her as a son. And around the time Joy came to meet him Mrs. Janie King Moore had died and that made his friends concerned for him since they wanted him to be free.

But I think she did him good. She made him happy.

I recommend this book if you want to know more about Joy, or Jack or if you are just looking for an interesting biography to read.

Thanks to Houghton Mifflin Harcourt and NetGalley for providing me with a free copy for an honest review! show less