Travis and I recently finished reading this book together. Although we do not devote as much time to reading together as I think either of us would like, we like to steal away minutes here and there enjoying a good book together. This was one that I picked out to read together. I had originally brought it on Christmas vacation to read by myself and after I had started into a few chapters, Travis decided he wanted to read it with me (we had just finished our other book).

I think it is awesome to have a small book club with my favorite person. It has been fun to read more books together and stop and talk about what we have read. Mostly we talk throughout the book, but at the end here are some of the questions we asked each other (with my answers):

Who is your favorite character and why?

My favorite character was the main character Orual. I think she became my favorite throughout the novel because I learned the most about her because the book is written from her point of view. Though she is deeply flawed and uses the art of manipulation to get her younger sister Psyche to do what she wants, as a reader, I understood about her motivations and sadness after she made her mistake, and therefore I feel like I understood her best, flaws and all. She ended up becoming queen of Glome and was a good person in a lot of ways, but the story highlights her mistakes in a big way and how she learned to either overcome them or deal with them throughout her life.

Who is the most admirable character?

I think that Psyche is the most admirable character in the story because she is pure in her motives. She loves her sister and wants her to believe her situation and be happy for her. Psyche spends the rest of her life doing tasks the gods want of her all because she showed distrust, thanks to Orual.

Travis said he thinks Bardia is the most admirable character because of how hard he works for Queen Orual and shows his duty for his country by dedicating himself to his work. He also shows that he cares for his wife and is an upstanding person in all ways.

What does this book teach us about selfish love?

We talked about how essentially the main theme from his book is that selfish love is never OK. It is not right to manipulate someone, even if you love them. I think everyone already knew that even without reading this book, but what I think is interesting is that we as humans are still prone to experience selfish love simply because of our mortality--our imperfection. So the question is: how do we deal with the selfish love that we feel? Some people succumb to it and therefore suffer their whole lives because of it like Orual, but both Travis and I know because of the gospel that it is possible to overcome carnal feelings and desires and practice selfless love.

Why is Orual's ugliness such an important theme to the book?
Because of the title, it lends us to believe that there is significance behind everyone's face in the book. Over and over it states how ugly Orual is as a child and teenager. As a queen, she decides to veil her face, which I think has some significance too. I think it comes down to this quote from the book: "I saw well why the gods do not speak to us openly, nor let us answer. Till that word can be dug out of us, why should they hear the babble that we think we mean? How can they meet us face to face till we have faces?" Travis had to read this out loud to me several times before I started to understand it in the context of the book. I think it means that until we know who we are (until we have figured out our "face"), then how can God (or in the story, gods) speak to us? Orual did not understand who she was because she succumbed to her inner ugliness by manipulating Psyche. She suffered her whole life after that because she was confused and hurt that it did not work. She veiled her physical face to hide her pain and suffering. Once she faced herself and realized who she was, then she could learn and come to terms with everything and even attempt at seeking redemption.

What have we learned about revelation?
There is a part where Psyche tries to convince Orual that she is living in the palace of a god and that he is her husband, but Orual does not believe it. As Orual leaves, she looks back and sees the palace. She never admits to anyone that she sees it because she only caught a glimpse and rationalizes it away. However, she did in actuality see it. I think revelation is a lot like this. We do not see grand big pictures all of the time. It is usually glimpses and if we are not paying attention we will miss it, or miss the importance of what we are spiritually seeing.

In short, here is the breakdown of Till We Have Faces:

Genre: Fiction
Number of pages: 309
Reading endurance: Low to medium. I thought the book was easy to understand and therefore easy to get through, although it took us 2 months to get through it because we don't have much time to devote to reading.
Good Moral: Yes. It addresses themes of selfish love vs. selfless love, beauty vs. ugliness, sacrifice, forgiveness, and redemption.
Favorite Quote: "I was with book, as a woman is with child."
Recommend? Yes