A review by philippurserhallard
Lilith by George MacDonald

2.0

Whoo boy. I remembered this (and the two Princess books) as being the good MacDonald books I'd read, some 20 or so years ago now. This time round... well, there's some memorable imagery, and it's fun to spot the ways it influenced CS Lewis and others. But the sentimental depiction of children, the infantilisation of sex, the fetishisation of death, are unpalatably Victorian to say the least. And the language: fervidly poetic, wilfully archaic, spattered with quotations and shrill metaphors. I think I was making allowances for "period" last time I read it, but for heaven's sake, this story's coeval with the Sherlock Holmes books. I'm afraid I found it virtually unreadable.