Once Upon a Wardrobe
By: Patti Callahan / Narrated By: Fiona Hardingham
Length: 7 hrs and 8 mins
Listened to it, liked it. Thought about it, lackluster… So there you go…
‘Pon listening to Once Upon a Wardrobe, I’d liked it well enough. After all, C.S. Lewis wrote some of the most brilliantly-crafted fiction with his “Chronicles of Narnia”. I LOVE those books, and I’ve been fascinated by C.S. Lewis as a man who was a Believer, saw war, became an atheist, became a Believer again. And? The guy had a plethora of truly AWEsome chums. And a pretty gosh-awfully neat brother, Warnie.
But I dunno. P’raps it’s cuz Big Sis and I listened to this and then went onto The Great Unexpected by Dan Mooney, and I’ve kinda sorta left reviewing this for after that particular audiobook… that now? I’m completely underwhelmed by author Patti Callahan’s peculiar blending of fact and fiction for this Historical novel.
1950, and Oxford student, Megs, is tasked by her dying little brother, George, to find out “where Narnia came from.” This rather forcefully nudges Megs to do what she’s usually too shy to do: Find author C.S. Lewis, professor at Oxford, and shake him down for info.
Lewis and his brother, Warnie, welcome her graciously into their home, and a wee bit into their lives. -BUT- Lewis has his own certain way of answering George’s query. He will answer this question by offering Megs stories of his past, his life as an imaginative boy, missing a mum who died all too early; his life as a student, struggling to find a place for himself; even his experiences in the trenches of WWI. He tells these stories, Megs listens, Megs writes them down afterward from memory, and then she goes home to share them with George. Bed-bound, George escapes into his imagination as Megs reads to him, and he “sees” all as tho’ it was happening juuuust now, so immediate in his mind’s eye.
There’s quite a bit on Megs having a logical mind, of her particular devotion to mathematics, of her inability to see stories, particularly Fairy Tales, as having any true value in life. Indeed, near the end, she desperately tries to make sense of all of them by plotting, by graphing, by trying to figure out the relationships between the parts, the whole. And she’s shamed for it. A young man, the romantic lead, finds her doing this in a pub and grabs her notebook, holds it out of her reach, all the while condemning her for not thinking in a proper literary manner. I mean, Boooooo!!! Her little brother is freaking DYING, she’s grieving and desperate, on the verge of tears, and she gets lambasted for her rational processes of mind?!?
Booooooo!!!
Okay, I’m done with that scene, but it truly stuck in my craw…
Onto narration? Fiona Hardingham does very well here, managing sibling-relationships of all ilks, gentler tones of young romance, heavier tones of the burdens of grief. For the most part, however, Hardingham’s performance is one that is quietly understated, doesn’t get in the way of the story, doesn’t add much to the story either. Still, I’ve dinged her for her aTROcious male voices in the past, and that isn’t the case at all here. She manages the menfolk quite well, inhabiting Lewis, being Warnie, and conveying George’s youthful enthusiasm and love of life, even as he wastes away, inching towards his early death.
For the most part, this is quite simply a gentle story of a true bond between sister and little brother, between master of Life and pupil just setting out on her own Life’s journey, and between two brothers, crafting and creating their own new Worlds and Characters. There’s a glorious little image at the end, one that came to Lewis at the age of 16 and never deserted his imagination: A faun in the snow, carrying packages, struggling with an umbrella.
Other than that?
There are no answers here. Only stories of Lewis, and after Callahan’s Becoming Mrs. Lewis, I’m left feeling as tho’ this author was doing a weeee bit o’ pandering to the C.S. Lewis estate. Just a guise to show she’s done her research? Is that too harsh a thought?
Well, p’raps. But while there are some grand stories?
There’s precious little heart…
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