ISBN: 1718873980

There are not too many books that straddle the line between Christianity and mysticism that are able to negotiate the twists and turns the subject matter entails well. George MacDonald took an early swipe at the future genre in 1881 with this work.

It proves hard to categorize what the author did. There are plenty of allusions and symbolic meanings present in the volume. The quick storyline is that a young man inherits an estate that is on the verge of ruin in Scotland. This is far too simple of a reduction, however, of the rich layers present in this work.

Probably, it would be better to say that a young man learns what it means to mature into an adult spiritually while keeping the Christian teachings close at hand, as well as making sure the soul does not slip from him while balancing the demands placed upon him by the world.

The estate he is to inherit is curious and is not without its ghosts. The walls of the house speak of the ancient history of his family, but indeed also of his mother who the reader learns, has died earlier in his life. His father is a constant reminder of what it means to be noble and to stay meek. The other characters in the house help to tell Cosmo, the boy, about his past, and have key pieces of information about his future.

It is via a chance bad weather meeting that Cosmo meets Joan who is entangled with his life in several key ways and he in hers. While their initial meeting seems to have something romantic about it, there are other possibilities closer at home, and a large portion of the novel concerns itself with how the two reconcile their incipient feelings for one another.

There are, of course, massive doses of supernatural happenings throughout the work. The bulk of these could be summarized by saying God turns what seems to be meant toward misfortune toward good where the Warlock estate is concerned.

It is also curious that the book was named Castle Warlock with the obvious connotations that entails considering that the narrative of the book is very much how to be a good Christian. It is said by some sources that C.S. Lewis used this work to construct some of his other more famous novels. Indeed, there is the courting with the magical smacked up against the Christian as one often finds in his novels. While the two themes move fluidly enough between one another in a Scottish castle, it would require a place like Narnia for Lewis to make the confluence happen.

One difficulty in accessing this work is that the accents are authentic to Scotland. Indeed, there even exist alternative language versions written in Highland kinds of tongues or Scots-English. After awhile, it becomes easier to understand what is being said as the reader begins to develop the vocabulary meanings through context and repetition. Still, there are some key moments where the reader might not have everything said easily understood and these moments require a later clarification when they contain key pieces of plot.

This kind of work is not a modern undertaking in any sense of the word since the entirety of the story exists as a kind of parable as well as a tale. Still, there is a richness accessible to the determined reader that most modern literature cannot replicate. One could do worse than spend several evenings by the reading light decoding some Scottish turns-of-phrase.