Kirkus评论
Clumsily told, but worth the telling: the truncated life of a vital, gifted, no-nonsense Jewish Communist who managed to become an Episcopalian Tory without losing her soul. Until now Davidman has been remembered mostly as the American divorcee who in 1956 captivated and married inveterate bachelor C. S. Lewis, only to die from cancer four years later, at age 45. Readers can be grateful to Dorsett, a professor of history at Wheaton College, for rescuing this unusual woman from semi-oblivion; but they'll wish he had a more sophisticated sensibility and a more elegant style--that he wouldn't remark about one of Davidman's poems that it ""contains much symbolism,"" or praise her because although she ""fell out of God's will from time to time, she did not deliberately practice sin."" Still, the narrative moves along efficiently enough. Born in New York (1915) to a tense, unhappy family of Eastern European Jewish immigrants, Davidman was a brilliant student (A.B., Hunter, M.A. Columbia), an English major, the author of some thoroughly respectable novels and verse, a book reviewer for New Masses, a failed screenwriter, and a passionate believer in causes. She married William Gresham, a novelist, singer, and (in Dorsett's version, at least) charming-repulsive alcoholic. Mothering her two sons helped to extinguish her waning dedication to the Communist Party. Enduring Gresham's ugly infidelities helped to spark her conversion after a quasi-mystical moment when ""God came in."" Gresham later divorced her (to marry her cousin) and Davidman moved to England, where she already had a correspondent and good friend in Lewis. Many of his pious, donnish cronies were taken aback by the brash American, but their marriage seems to have been remarkably good--with more than its share of piquancy and pathos. A sometimes crude but serviceable effort. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.