A few things I'll say here for posterity:

Here's a nit-picky complaint: Vanauken speaks from a painful place of privilege. To be clear, I am NOT someone who thinks privilege taints a person; there's an idea, perpetuated mostly by contemporary feminists, that having privilege (being a white, rich, Christianized male) means one's take on the world is irrelevant since their experience has been too cushy to warrant consideration. This is not what I mean when I describe Vanauken's privilege as "painful". (Contemporary feminists are, in my opinion, mostly foolish - and in regard to privilege, especially so. An educated, heterosexual, white, Christian male has as much of a valid take on the world as any uneducated, homosexual, black woman. It makes no sense to prefer one to the other, unless, of course, we take education into consideration.) My umbrage is that Vanauken speaks from a place of privilege without gratitude. I don't think the ease and blessings of his life ever fully dawn on him - at least, not that we see. At one point, he describes his going away to Oxford after receiving an MA from Yale as "inevitable". It was just "right" that he should go.

*eye roll* Uh, yeah, most people don't really think of Oxford as an "inevitable" experience. The whole attitude toward academia just bugged me. He says a few other things in a similarly despicable vein as a young man, but these comments are more forgivable since he's young (“girls are emotional and silly, I despise people who don't think clearly, Christianity is for suckers, I'm obviously ten times more clever than everyone else,” etcetc yawn yawn yawn).

That said, Vanauken has a real talent for describing place. Glenmerle, though he never says where that actually is, felt real and warm and grand, "the perfect place to come home to". Descriptions of Oxford - where I can happily say I've been - were perhaps a bit gushy, but nevertheless beautiful. My favorite place, though, was Virginia. St. Stephen's, the Blueridge Mountains, the jungle heat - at once dreamy and visceral. So good. Makes me wanna move.

Great thoughts on books here, too. Vanauken explains the Holy Trinity to his Christian friends by drawing parallels to the author and characters of a book (God is the author, Jesus is His character). There's also a commentary on the nature of time and eternity in the last (or second to last?) chapter that's well worth reading, even if you read it as a standalone piece of philosophy. Basically, he uses the experience of literature to explain what eternity means, and it’s brilliant.

I'm not sure what I thought of he and Davy's relationship. Lewis rightly criticizes some of it - I won't say anything about that here because, hello, spoilers - but other aspects were... I mean, they were beautiful. I loved the way he and Davy thought of their love as a secret club, maintaining child-like spirit of wonder and adventure. They make up secret whistles to communicate in public, refer to what I'd call relationship talks as "Navigator's Council", name every place they live in and every dream they share, creating a sense of era and project in a life that could otherwise float along unacknowledged. This is one of the reasons people like life-writing so much, I think. You see how other people think of and express their experience in the world, and how one life on one planet can be so glorious for some and so dull and sad for others. I suppose it's always a great mixture, but Sheldon and Davy certainly made theirs as triumphant and lively as humanly possible. They truly lived together, soaking up all the joy they could.

Only three stars because, as I say, Vanauken's sophisticated brattiness was irksome, and there was a bit too much gushing over Oxford, C. S. Lewis, and loooooove for my taste. But I'd still recommend this to anyone who is in love, and wants to know how they should think of it - and of course, I’d recommend this to anyone who has lost a loved one.