- Paperback: 208 pages
- Publisher: Sphere; New edition edition (16 Dec 1976)
- Language English
- ISBN-10: 0722191561
- ISBN-13: 978-0722191569
- Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars See all reviews (2 customer reviews)
- Amazon Bestsellers Rank: 1,347,545 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
War in Heaven, A Novel
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Product Description
Product Description
Williams gives a contemporary setting to the traditional story of the Search for the Holy Grail. Examining the distinction between magic and religion, "War in Heaven" is an eerily disturbing book, one that graphically portrays a metaphysical journey through the shadowy crevices of the human mind.
--This text refers to an alternate
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edition.
About the Author
Charles Williams (1886-1945) was a writer who excelled in a number of different genres. He was a novelist, dramatist, theologian and literary critic. He belonged to The Inklings: C. S. Lewis liked him, J. R. R. Tolkien didn't. T. S. Eliot admired him as a novelist, published his final novel at Faber and was responsible for the reissuing of the earlier six. All seven novels are being reissued in Faber Finds: War in Heaven, Many Dimensions, The Place of the Lion, The Greater Trumps, Shadows of Ecstasy, Descent into Hell and All Hallows' Eve.
--This text refers to an alternate
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First Sentence
The telephone bell was ringing wildly, but without result, since there was no-one in the room but the corpse. Read the first page
Front Cover | Copyright | Table of Contents | Excerpt | Back Cover
The telephone bell was ringing wildly, but without result, since there was no-one in the room but the corpse. Read the first page
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
15 of 15 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
SPRITUAL THRILLER,
By
This review is from: War in Heaven (Paperback)
With all the fuss and furore surrounding Lord of the Rings and The Chronicles of Narnia, Charles Williams remains the poor relation among the Inklings, that group of Oxford intellectuals who regularly met over a pint at the pub to discuss their latest writings. Where Tolkien and Lewis both invented entire fantasy universes in which to set their epics, Williams works on a smaller scale, setting his books firmly in between-the-wars Middle England. For all that, he concerns himself just as much with the great archetypal myths as either of the other two: it's just that he puts them in an everyday context. Spiritual Thrillers, he liked to call them.War in Heaven starts out as an Agatha Christie-type Murder Mystery among book publishers but rapidly turns out to be concerned with much bigger and darker forces - nothing less than the pursuit of the Grail, in fact (or, rather the Graal as Williams prefers to call it). This novel is, in many ways, a cousin of the roughly contemporaneous Dennis Wheatley Black Magic books. It has to be said that Williams is not quite as good at winding up the thrills and the tension as that master of plots and cliffhangers. Nevertheless, he takes us on an exciting enough ride through country-house gardens, rural churches, dubious London herbal retailers and peoples his tale with a varied collection of publishers, minor ecclesiastics, scheming villains and darkly evil Levantines. Only the appearance of the prester John, the slightly wimpish deus ex machina towards the end, rather lets the side down. This is probably the best of the Charles Williams novels and makes for a good read. Many of the set-pieces come off particularly well. His ambitions are humbler than his Inkling contemporaries, but his books are none the worse for that - indeed, they lack a lot of the pretentiousness that often invades the others. And, if you enjoy War in Heaven, there is quite a collection of Williams' Spritual Thrillers to explore.
14 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Mystery, Adventure, and the Holy Grail,
By A Customer
This review is from: War in Heaven (Paperback)
This was the first book by Charles Williams I read, and, to date, it is my favorite book of his. The opening scene grabs you, and, after a bit of tedium in establishing characters, the story moves at a steady pace from murder mystery to supernatural thriller. Anyone interested in Grail Lore will enjoy this book.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews on Amazon.com (beta) Amazon.com:
4.0 out of 5 stars (27 customer reviews) 53 of 53 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
some thoughts on a thought-provoking book...,
By NotATameLion - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: War in Heaven (Paperback)
Jesus answered and said to him, "Because I said to you, 'I saw you under the fig tree,' do you believe? You will see greater things than these...Most assuredly, I say to you, hereafter you shall see heaven open, and the angels of God ascending and descending upon the Son of Man." (John 1:50-51)"War in Heaven," much like the story of humanity, is all about the invasion of the supernatural--the divine and the demonic--into the mundane settings of everyday life. Charles Williams has a keen sense of what Thoreau called the "lives of quiet desperation" that most people live. The characters in "War in Heaven" are plagued by everyday demons long before they encounter any exceptional ones...Williams takes these lives, and in a most un-quiet way...builds an entrancing story--one that shakes the reader to the core. This is one of the scariest books I've read in a long while. The presence of evil is palpably felt in the antagonist of the book...a very creepy kind of evil...not your run of the mill stuff. I don't want to spoil the plot (not to mention that the plot is a little hard to describe-owing to the fact that so much of what is import in this book has little to do with story line--so much of it is "in the moment.") So all I will say here is that the conclusion is well worth the "dry spots" one finds in the prose. It is one of the most beautifully written scenes I have ever come across in English Literature. I recommend this book...but not to the faint of heart. 50 of 52 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This Also is Thou,
By Gord Wilson "alivingdog.com" - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: War in Heaven (Paperback)
Let's start by granting all the cavils of the critics: Charles Walter Stansby Williams wrote bad poetry, worse plays, and worst of all, a handful of obscure, nearly unreadable novels. Nevertheless, Charles Williams is my favorite writer, and War in Heaven my favorite of his books. Let me proceed to explain why. CW's poetry may miss the mark of some poetic standard, but even now I can recite pieces from Taliessin Through Logres, while I usually find modern poetry uninspiring. His plays may not hold up well in some conventional sense of what plays are supposed to be, but they contain some of the most quotable lines I've ever read, and I would drive to the next state to see one put on. His novels may be dismissed as dense and obscure, but they are among the most gripping books I've ever read. War in Heaven isn't his best novel--that would be All Hallows Eve-- yet it's my favorite. I'm finally up to the point of saying why. Some college lit classes read Descent into Hell because it takes place on a number of well-defined levels. War in Heaven has wheels within wheels as well, but they aren't so clearly defined. It's not quite his easiest to read novel--that would be Many Dimensions--but it's still one of the easiest. Of all his novels, War in Heaven perhaps falls over into the most categories--it's a supernatural thriller that is sort of a detective novel, kind of a suspense novel, in a way about relationships, about self-growth, spiritual search and discovery, but not in a traditional sense. Everything that conventional novels are supposed to be these novels are not, which is why people like me who have no desire to read the bestsellers at the supermarket checkout stand yet find themselves taken with Williams' novels. One popular book report topic in college lit classes is to show how the characters "grow" through the book. With War in Heaven I found this difficult to do because reading a Williams book, it seems it's more like the reader who grows. Although the little group who throw in their lot with the Archdeacon in War in Heaven come to live by a typically Williams-esque maxim, "Believe and doubt well," the book seems to end where it began, yet somehow everything is new. 25 of 25 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Williams's graal tale trumps "The Da Vinci Code",
By C. V. Manning - Published on Amazon.com
This review is from: War in Heaven (Paperback)
It gives essentially none of the story away to reveal that the plot of "War in Heaven" revolves around the Graal (per Williams's preferred spelling). Williams's first published novel is full of the blurring of reality that one finds in all of his fiction and, like "The da Vinci Code", involves a struggle between opposing groups drawn into conflict by the Graal. However, unlike "The da Vinci Code"'s ersatz, vapid spirituality--which, where it has flavor at all tastes merely of cheap sideshow spiritualism--"War in Heaven" depicts allies of darkness that are rank with evil even as its friends of light savor of ultimate goodness. In "War in Heaven" one gets a glimpse beyond the veil to see ultimate spiritual reality consisting of powers and principalities swarming in defiance of a holy throne even as the King of Light engages all according to his overarching plan and by his undeniable power. By contrast, in "The da Vinci Code" one finds that the ultimate reality beyond the veil is tantamount to a group of 7 year-olds playing with a Ouija board at a slumber party. So, if you're looking for a "spiritual thriller" of substance that involves the Holy Grail, "War in Heaven" trumps (perhaps greatly trumps?) "The da Vinci Code." 5 stars. An excellent book.
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