All Hallows' Eve

All Hallow's Eve was the last of Charles Williams' completed novels, first published in the year of his death, 1945. It begins just after the deaths of two young women, and follows their persisting consciousnesses through "the City" (which is London only as a phantom skin of a mystical heavenly Jerusalem) throughout the book. At the same time as the novel elaborates this perspective of the deceased, it supplies a parallel narrative among their survivors: one's husband who is a diplomatic functionary, his friend an art painter, and the painter's fiancee--a former schoolmate of the two dead characters.

The central plot tension of the book is constructed around Simon the Clerk, an aspiring antichrist of impressive talents and no show more sympathetic qualities whatsoever. The villain's "Jewishness" is emphasized in ways that gave me a wince or two, but were doubtless theologically important to Williams. Like the other "Aspects of Power" novels, this one is an urban fantasy that predates the genre, and it features the kind of fell sorcery that crops up in the earlier books. It clothes supernatural events in the sort of finely-crafted impressionistic prose the author had deployed in Descent Into Hell.

The Eerdmans edition I read had a testimonial introduction by T.S. Eliot, in which he extolled Williams' personal virtues, and briefly discussed the mystical doctrine and psychological insight in Williams' works. There is enough reference to the contents of the novel as if the reader were familiar with it that the Eliot intro might be better enjoyed after reading the book--not for any worry of spoilers, but just for its own appreciation.

By curious chance (?) I read All Hallow's Eve just a few weeks after The Third Policeman. Now I may need to go re-read UBIK. It seems like somebody is trying to tell me something. Did I actually not survive my recent bicycle crash? Maybe it's just that time of year. After all, everybody's going to die, and we're all of us just stories anyway. show less

This is a love story that thrives beyond the grave. Lester and Richard were married only the day before when Lester is killed by a falling airplane. What are the chances? Now Lester is caught between two very different worlds - the living world where Richard still walks about grieving and Lester's dead and silent world in limbo. She hasn't made it into either heaven nor hell. Some people can sense her and some can even see her outright. Still others, she can walk clean through and they wouldn't feel even the slightest whisper. Lester feels alone but she is not. Not really. Also killed in the bizarre crash was her living best friend, Evelyn. Both seek the afterlife forgiveness of a third girl, Betty, who Lester and Evelyn were cruel to show more in school. Betty is under the spell of evil in the form of her mother, Lady Wallingford, and religious and biological Father Simon Leclerc. Father Simon, better known as The Clerk, is seen as a prophet, a religious leader, a powerful orator able to sway large masses with his preaching...a devil in disguise who practices magic. He has Evelyn under his power as well. She turns out to be the evil one.

Williams is a strange author. His storytelling is dense and sometimes confusing. I likened it to hacking through a thick and oppressive jungle with a dull machete. You spend a lot of time slogging through the narrative and sometimes miss the finer nuances of the story. I found myself frequently rereading passages if only to orient myself to time and place. show less

Charles Williams more or less invented what we'd now call "urban fantasy", and was a huge influence on C.S. Lewis and Tolkien, but his dense, idiosyncratic writing and philosophical/theological obsessions make his books a little daunting. They're all worth the effort, but this one is probably the closest to a successful novel and it's a page-turner too-- sort of the "evil sorcerer, wandering ghosts and star-crossed lovers" story to end all such stories. There are some images that make your heart skip a beat, and others that sneak up and haunt you; he does like to wander off into pure lyric symbolism, and you have to accept that he will lose you from time to time.

About the theology-- like Lewis, Williams made Christianity central to all show more his work, but Christian fans of Lewis, be they conservative or liberal, might find Williams a little alarming; his sheer enthusiasm always hints at taking you down some unorthodox roads. (Frankly, I think that's true of Lewis too, but he just had a less wild-eyed persona and wasn't known for hanging out with occultists.) Just go with it; there's joy there. show less

This is a morality tale in the form of a ghost story. My copy has a 1948 copyright. There is an introduction by T. S. Eliot which informs us that Mr. Williams died a few days after the German surrender in 1945. Our villain is a Jewish Satanic wizard who is working on some necromantic method to become world emperor, avoiding the humiliations of that Jew of two thousand years ago, Jesus ben Joseph. Williams comes back repeatedly to how the villain looks Jewish, etc. I'd have thought that villainizing Jews would have been quite awkward in 1945. Maybe this just shows - and really the whole book is very religious, but with quite a specific religious angle - a religion that's a kind of pentagram of morality, history, metaphysics, personal show more destiny, and empire. Well, I guess a lot of religion is still that today.

The story here is quite small scale. Maybe there are a dozen characters altogether, but I think seven main characters. There are two ghosts but they are full characters here, with emotions and actions and dialog. The whole plot structure is very simple. The first half of the book or so is just the young folks figuring out what dastardly deeds the villain intends. As the villain is foiled, we do learn quite a few practical occult tips. E.g. when things start to go wrong, just bail out. Desperate attempts to patch things together generally end up making everything into a bigger catastrophe.

The writing is quite rich, almost cloying. It reminds me a bit of John Cowper Powys. I remember a few pages in Porius where Powys went on and on describing some detail like water dripping from a branch or something. Yeah, it's not really the kind of book that is popular nowadays! show less

I was a literature major, trained to read novels the average reader wouldn't read, so I've probably never called a novel exhausting before; but that's what reading All Hallows' Eve was--exhausting. It's only about 275 pages, but it took me months to read, mostly because it demanded all my concentration and I often didn't have the energy.

The issue isn't the story, it's Charles Williams' questionable writing style. It very frequently segues into a dense, meandering pseudo-poetry that makes the narration unfocused and unnecessarily complex, and sometimes even obfuscates whatever is actually happening. It shows and tells simultaneously. If the novel hadn't been so written, it might be half the length. Like most or all of his friends in the show more Inklings, Williams was a poet as well as a novelist; and the entire book can serve as a cautionary tale of what a novel looks like when such a writer goes too far in mingling poetry with prose. It's a mess. Descent Into Hell (the first Williams work I read) is similarly written but shorter, and more focused and disciplined, and is the better novel for it.

I don't even have that much to say about the plot because I was too distracted by the writing style. But it involves a villain using Kabbalistic magic to gain illicit access to the world of the dead, which he hopes to gain some sort of secrets or power from--his goals are explained very vaguely. show less

Book 1 of the 2020 Challenge. Story was engaging and played well to my love of vintage urban fantasy, similar to Lewis' Space Trilogy. This is not surprising since the author was a contemporary and associate of Lewis.

However, the only print edition I could find was a print-on-demand version which was filled with typos (nearly every page), which, combined with the author's convoluted syntax, resulted in my skimming through a lot of the deep philosophical passages. If I could have gotten past these obstacles more effectively I would probably be writing now about the rich use of symbolism (water, light, etc).

There is an anti-Semitic theme, as the bad guy is a Jewish magician / alchemist and references to his Jewishness are frequent. That show more was unsettling, especially considering that the story takes place in post-WWII London.

I read it mainly for its milieu but I doubt if very many others without my love of this 'type' would stick it out. Given a do-over though, I would read it again. show less

I'm fairly certain I liked it, although this is a strange book which I actually had some difficulty connecting with. The characters are a little thinly drawn for my taste, but the prose is reminiscent of C.S. Lewis - which is fair enough, as he and Williams were members of the same writing group. What I found most interesting was the mysticism (and indeed, T.S. Eliot, in his introduction, describes Williams as a mystic at heart).

All Hallow's Eve reads very much like a story written by a man who has read the works of Aliester Crowley, understood them, and found him dangerous. I'm actually reasonably impressed, because most people seem to find Crowley either deeply profound or silly, and to find a third reaction is interesting in the show more extreme. (I have no evidence that Williams did read Crowley, I should hasten to point out, other than that Simon, the evil magician at the center of this book, seems to be very much like Crowley if Crowley were determined to be an Antichrist.)

I'd class this as urban fantasy in the same genre as War for the Oaks - nothing like modern urban fantasy, but a fantasy which is inherently about a city, and in this case, the archetypal City to which all others belong. I'll definitely be thinking about this book for a while. show less