All Hallow's Eve

by Charles Williams

Book Overview

First published in 1945, "All Hallows' Eve" is a fantasy novel by British writer Charles W. S. Williams. Charles Walter Stansby Williams (1886 - 1945) was a British theologian, novelist, poet,... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0802812503
• Release Date: January 1981
• Publisher: Eerdmans Pub Co
• Length: 296 Pages
• Weight: 0.65 lbs.
• Dimensions: 7.5" x 0.8" x 5.4"

Customer Reviews

Soft souls avoid, for this is a challenging supernatural read

Creepiest book I've ever read. The occult, the dead, evil magicians, ordinary colourless people, and a conspiracy of a changing malevolent world order just beneath the surface of things. The story arc is difficult to describe, but the two lead characters are dead girls operating in a depopulated limbo, with occasional glimpses of where they are heading (Hell and Heaven) and where they have been (the mortal world). Secondary characters include well-intentioned, but hapless young men, an evil grand dame, her suppressed daughter, and a monster of a necromancer intent on enslaving humanity and the dead alike. Williams narrative style borrows much from philology, for the precise and poetic way in which he uses words lulls us into other worlds. This is in fact his thesis, that words are a link to another world, which is why spells and prayers are effective beyond their mere utterance. One wonders what Heidegger and Wittgenstein would have thought, for this is the novelisation and narrative explication of Heidegger's conceptions of being-there, and the refutation of the reductionism inherent in wordly precision that Wittgenstein refuted his own Tractatus and sought the rest of his life in the elusive and indefinable power of mytho-poetic language. Soft souls avoid, for this is a challenging supernatural read.

A ghost story, but not as we know it

Published in 1945 and still in print, this is the last of the novels of Charles Williams, who along with J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis was one of the Oxford literary group the Inklings. The recent increase in popularity of his fiction, initially boosted by his association with the Inklings, is probably due to the current success of the Frank Peretti thrillers, and the LaHaye-Jenkins 'Left Behind' series. However, in contrast to the current populists Mr Williams is intellectually quite a demanding read.All Hallows Eve is another Williams ghost story, gently told in his own highly unorthodox style. Two young women have been killed in an accident in the aftermath of the WWII air raids on London, but their ghostly participation in the story is as real as that of any of the living people. It is probably fair to say that this novel, as with most Charles Williams fiction, is not recommended for the overly sensitive person, and could easily be misinterpreted the overly hasty.Simon LeClerk is a powerful mage, more a Saruman than a Gandalf, and his plan is domination of this world and - more worryingly - any other that he can access. His adoring acolytes form the powerbase of his support for a new world religion. Betty, daughter of one of these acolytes, is the unwilling dupe of the magician, and the key subject in his most daring and horrible experiment. An artist is the bereaved husband of Evelyn, one of the ghosts, and a civil servant is Betty's intended husband. The characters have depth and robust individual style. While many an author can paint real villains doing convincingly bad things, Williams is unusual in that his good characters and their goodness are equally if not more convincing. Their goodness is genuinely felt and is strongly attractive. There is no hint that the villains have all the fun or that the author really has little idea of how to portray true goodness, or even what it is. From this novel I also gained a valuable insight into the true nature and function of art. Rather like 'The Picture of Dorian Gray', two of the artist's paintings play a pivotal part in the story. The artist manages in one picture to catch and portray something of a hidden truth about the city of London, and in the other something about the magician himself (who approves of the picture). As these things could not be captured by any mere photograph, the art has to say what can best be said, or perhaps only be said, in a painting.

Williams at his incredible best

Whatever your ideas of heaven and hell, they will never be the same after reading Charles Williams. Whether the new images will be comfortable or not is another question. In some ways Williams's picture of heaven is, if anything, more frightening than the conventional depiction of hell. It's certainly considerably more compelling. His dead protagonist was one scared woman--and so was I, for most of the novel. In "All Hallows' Eve" Williams gives his eschatological images expression in their leanest, purest form, mingled with other terrific and similarly life-threatening images of the war that was then engulfing the world. Read it!

A major twentieth century author delivers very well in this

All Hallows Eve starts with a detailed scene of a young woman standing at night in a park waiting for her fiance to arrive. She knows that even if he arrives, he will not see her, as she is dead. She has been killed by a 2nd World War aircraft that has just fallen on her. The remainder of the book chronicles her various encounters with strange indivduals, one of whom, of course, is a Satan figure. Williams points discretely and concretely to the presence of God --but of course the reader does not feel set upon by any pentecostal fervor. All of Charles Williams" books entered the scene apropol of the times. Now, seventy years later at the turn of the century, they seem more appropriate than ever.

A major twentieth century author delivers very well in this

All Hallows Eve starts with a detailed scene of a young woman standing at night in a park waiting for her fiance to arrive. She knows that even if he arrives, he will not see her, as she is dead. She has been killed by a 2nd World War aircraft that has just fallen on her. The remainder of the book chronicles her various encounters with strange indivduals, one of whom, of course, is a Satan figure. Williams points discretely and concretely to the presence of God --but of course the reader does not feel set upon by any pentecostal fervor. All of Charles Williams" books entered the scene apropol of the times. Now, seventy years later at the turn of the century, they seem more appropriate than ever. It's really too bad that the publisher has allowed this book to go "out of print", since (1)Charles Williams was a major literary figure of his time, and knew T.S. Eliot, George MacDonald and C.S. Lewis--and they knew and appreciated him as an author and religious mystic. Williams believed he was always in contact with the supernatural or "the other side" --and believed that death was an illusion and delusion. Apparently individuals in the publishing "industry" are only concerned with the immediate profits that they can read on the bottom line. May all of you be visited with some particularly illustrative ghosts. If you read Charles Williams, you will come to conclude that you are not crazy, but have encountered a perception that you can think of as utterly, terrifyingly real. Good luck Charles Williams, whose ever living room desk you are stiting at these days.