Product Description

“Lilith” is a dark fantasy/romance dripping with symbolism of death and salvation, a tale of the aptly-named Mr. Vane, his magical house, and his journeys into another world.

Meeting up with one mystery after another — including Adam & Eve themselves — Mr. Vane slowly but surely explores the mystery of the human fall from grace, and of our redemption. A raven leads him into this strange world where dreamers sleep waiting for the end of the world, lost children wander in the woods, and a battle brews with Lilith, the "other Eve" of Jewish legend.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #26877 in eBooks
• Published on: 2009-08-13
• Format: Kindle Book

Amazon.com Review
"Lilith is equal if not superior to the best of Poe," the great 20th-century poet W.H. Auden said of this novel, but the comparison only begins to touch on the richness, density, and wonder of this late 19th-century adult fantasy novel. First published in 1895 (inhabiting a universe with the early Yeats, George Bernard Shaw, and Oscar Wilde--not to mention Thomas Hardy), this is the story of the aptly named Mr. Vane, his magical house, and the journeys into another world into which it leads him.

Meeting up with one mystery after another, including Adam and Eve themselves, he slowly but surely explores the mystery of the human fall from grace, and of our redemption. Instructed into the ways of seeing the deeper realities of this world--seeing, in a sense, by the light of the spirit--the reader and Mr. Vane both sense that MacDonald writes from his own deep experience of radiance, from a bliss so profound that death's darkness itself is utterly eclipsed in its light. --Doug Thorpe

Customer Reviews

A bridge between worlds
The arena of twentieth century British Christian fiction, which includes authors from Chesterton to Auden to C.S. Lewis, appears to owe a great deal to George MacDonald, whose Victorian fantasy as demonstrated in "Lilith" has a primitive and dark undercurrent. Nightmarish yet optimistic, "Lilith" is possibly the most vivid life-after-death parable since Dante's Divine Comedy.

The protagonist and first-person narrator is an excitable man named Mr. Vane who lives in an old house that has been in his family for generations. One day he notices an odd creature making its way through the library; this turns out to be the birdlike Mr. Raven, who introduces him to a mysterious world beyond a magic mirror stored in the garret of the house. A more modern author might be tempted to give this world a name to distinguish it from the real one, but to MacDonald it is merely an extension of Mr. Vane's conscience.

Mr. Vane is understandably frightened of but fascinated by this world. Part of it appears to be a realm of the Dead where skeletal apparitions dance and fight as though they were still living; part a forest where stupid, brutal giants and innocent, benevolent "little ones" share their habitats; part a murky moor where leopardesses roam in search of babies to eat and enchanting women are to be found. At the center of this world, embodying its evil, commanded by an entity known as the "Shadow," is the demon princess Lilith, a direct allusion to the Assyrian goddess and to the legend of Adam's first wife.

As a guide to this netherworld, Mr. Raven acts as a kind of Virgil to Mr. Vane's Dante; the structure of the story has a vague analogy to the sequence of Inferno, Purgatory, and Paradise. Mr. Vane's role is less clear; he could be considered a crusader against evil or an emissary of the living in the land of the dead. However, I wouldn't want to restrict my interpretation to a religious allegory because the novel works as pure mythology, although supplementary to Judeo-Christian theology.

For all his antiquated, overly formal prose, MacDonald displays a very poetic sensibility for symbolism; for example, he personifies the sun as "he" and the moon as "she," as if they were a married pair of celestial luminaries. There is also an implied notion of a library as a gateway to the imaginations of the innumerable deceased, which is a comforting thought that connotes potential immortality through the written word. If nothing else, "Lilith" functions as a bridge between two enduring traditions -- imaginative classic literature and twentieth century fantasy.

a tale rich in paradox
Rich in symbolism, steeped in paradox, this is a tale of a man's journey and his coming to terms with the frailty of humanity when it is seen in the light of God. MacDonald never hides the basis of his paradigm--that there is a God who loves us, who knows better than we do what is best for us--rather, he weaves it into a rich tapestry of adventure wherein key characters make known the paradox that is at the heart of Chrisitianity: he who would be first must be last.

This is not an easy read. And, truly, anyone who is not willing to accept that an author may expound his faith through the words and deeds of his characters--indeed, through the fatherly nature of the narative itself--will little likely enjoy reading this tale. But to those who are ready to dive in to the heart of a realm of paradox in an attempt to better know the God that MacDonald worshiped, this may very well be a life-changing story.

I am not a man given to favorites. But no other work has colored my life so beautifully as MacDonald's LILITH. And no other story is more dear to my heart.

Simply Amazing
I don't think I even know how many times I've read this novel as it is truely my favorite. Each and every time I do, however, I see something I missed or understand something about the world I didn't understand or see previously. I am an avid fantasy reader but no author of the hundreds of fantasy novels I've read can even touch the world that George MacDonald creates in Lilith. The fact that it was written in the 1800's boggles the mind considering the depth that the author goes into theory of parallel universe and basic perception of "who" you are. From a Christian perspective, I think the word "pure" is what comes to mind often when reading this novel or Phantasies. George MacDonald also has several childrens stories which my nephews love, The Light Princess for instance. Whether your reading for spiritual reasons or strictly for a wonderous journey in the world of fantasy George MacDonald is, as C.S. Lewis said, "The Master".