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My new book, Paths in the Snow: A Literary Journey through “The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe”, is now available for advance orders, and I am tremendously excited about it.  The book explores C.S. Lewis’ first Narnia novel through the other stories to which it alludes, from Renaissance epic to children’s literature, and from mystery plays to detective fiction.  One of the things that has always struck me about the Narnia novel is how wildly and recklessly they borrow from other narratives.  Lewis blends together Classical myth with English folklore, adds bits of The Secret Garden and the Gospels, gestures to Rudyard Kipling and Thomas Malory, and sends the reader off to wander through this dazzling landscape.  In Paths in the Snow I took the chance to examine this intoxicating mix, chapter by chapter, and see how it shapes the literary and theological meanings of the book.

This is more than an allusion-hunting exercise, because this eclectic literary style seems importantly distinctive of Lewis.  It’s one of the things which famously marks Narnia as different from Midde-Earth.  Tolkien’s fantasy world is coherent and painstakingly developed, with its own prehistory, languages and an overwhelming sense of depth.  In contrast, Lewis’ building of Narnia can look haphazard and slapdash – indeed, Tolkien disapproved of Narnia for this reason, objecting to the blending of different kinds of mythology in one story.  Later fantasy writing has more often taken Tolkien as a model than Lewis, implicitly endorsing his judgement.  But I think this is to misunderstand Narnia: it is consciously eclectic, throwing its materials together in a striking collage and allowing them to spark light off each other.  Tracing the allusions and echoes of other works allows us to see Lewis’ fictional technique for what it was, rather than reading it as a sloppy or failed version of another kind of fantasy.

The dazzling juxtaposition of different sources in Narnia also points to Lewis’ own spiritual imagination.  He was, after all, a prodigiously well-read man, a professor of literature, and someone whose return to faith was bound up with his attitude to myth and story.  He spent many years as an atheist, and (like many people of his era), thought Christianity was simply another myth.  Works like J.G. Frazer’s The Golden Bough had explored world mythology and suggested that repeated patterns across different cultures undermined Christianity’s claim to be the truth.  If there were lots of virgins’ sons, and lots of dying and rising gods, this line of thought went, then none of them could claim to be a unique revelation from God.  Lewis came to believe, after discussion with Tolkien and others, that the inverse of this theory was true.  Christianity was the one “true myth”, and other similar myths through human culture glistened with shards of refractions of that single truth.  This element in his religious history sheds an intriguing light on the eclectic quality of the Narnia novels, which bring together myths and stories from wildly different times and places into a narrative which enacts some of the dramas of the Christian faith. 

There is something very distinctively Narnian, very significant for the novels’ essence and meaning, about this fictional style which continually resounds with echoes of other places and other stories.  Exploring the allusions and connections in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe can bring us closer to seeing Lewis’ vision, and experiencing his spiritual imagination.  I hope Paths in the Snow will allow readers to go deeper into Narnia, to pick up on even more of the magic and wonder of what we find there.

Researching and writing the book has been tremendous fun.  Often chasing down an echo which I thought I heard has taken me in odd directions, and revealed complexities I hadn’t expected.  The titles “Son of Adam” and “Daughter of Eve”, for example, appears to have been borrowed by Lewis from a joke in Rudyard Kipling’s Puck of Pook’s Hill, specifically from a passage which keeps mentioning that the characters are near the place known as the “Pevensey levels”.  The odd way time works in Narnia led me to suggest connections with J.B. Priestly’s Dangerous Corner and An Inspector Calls, as well as Lucy M. Boston’s Green Knowe novels and Agatha Christies Sleeping Murder – even though the latter were published after The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe – since they all seem to be influenced by J.W. Dunne’s theories of time.  In trying to define why the passages describing the hunting of the White Stag felt different from his prose style elsewhere, I ended up discovering that Lewis briefly starts writing in something like medieval alliterative metre. 

There is always more to explore in Narnia, and Paths in the Snow is crammed with things I have stumbled over on the way.  A recipe for whalemeat fritters, for example, or an argument in a newspaper over whether sweetshop owners keep the best stuff under the counter for their favourite male clients.  The importance of shaking hands in the new translations of the Bible.  I really hope the book helps other people in their explorations.  I have been delighted by some endorsements Paths in the Snow has already received.  Katherine Langrish said that ‘This is a book that will delight all Narnians. Jem Bloomfield leads us on a charming yet erudite ramble through the land of Narnia”, and that “I read the book in one huge gulp and enjoyed every page of it”.  Michael Ward described it as “Always intelligent, often intriguing, and at times an arresting read.”  Eleanor Parker was kind enough to call it “a rich and rewarding book, an indispensable guide for anyone wanting to gain a deeper understanding of C. S. Lewis’ much-loved novel” as well as “thoroughly well-informed, accessible and entertaining…a book no fan of Narnia should be without”. 

I’d be very appreciative if people ordered the book in advance, since I gather that pre-orders improve a book’s visibility.  I think it will make ideal autumn and winter reading – and would particularly suit winter book groups of Advent groups.  If books groups or Advent groups do read it, I would be very happy to meet via Zoom with them and chat about Narnia – as I said, there is always more to explore!