Novels That Explore Religious Questions, Celebrate Faith, and May Even Baptize the Imagination

When C.S. Lewis was eighteen years old, he bought at a used-book stall at a train station and began at once to read a copy of George MacDonald’s Phantastes: A Faerie Romance for Man and Women.

Lewis reports in Surprised by Joy, his spiritual autobiography, that “That night my imagination was, in a certain sense, baptized; the rest of me, not unnaturally, took longer… I had not the faintest notion of what I had let myself in for in reading that book… [Since then] I have read it many times; it fills for me the place of a devotional book. It tuned me up to a higher pitch and delighted me.”

As I have written elsewhere, in my own life reading fiction—classics of world literature, fairy tales and Greek myths, science fiction and detective novels—has done more to baptize my imagination, inform my faith and strengthen my courage than all the prayer techniques in the world.

Here are some novels that deal more or less explicitly with religious themes of creation, sin, redemption, vocation, faith, and doubt, books that can “tune us to a higher pitch and delight us” while deepening our sense of the possibilities of the Christian life.

C.S. Lewis’ space trilogy: Perelandra, Out of the Silent Planet, and That Hideous Strength introduce Ransom, a modern Oxford don who travels to an un-fallen planet and becomes involved in its fate, and fights against evil powers that are plotting its ruin. In the third volume, the battle comes to Earth, engaging planetary powers, angels, and the return of King Arthur as well as the reconciliation of an estranged young married couple. Weird, no doubt, and undeniably uneven, but absolutely wonderful and (especially Perelandra) full of theological and psychological insight. Till We Have Faces represents the Greek myth of Psyche, exploring questions of belief and jealousy, vision and blindness, sacrifice and power from the point of view of the lovely Psyche’s jealous older sister.

Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings saga is of course not just an adolescent boys’ fantasy of heroic quests and monsters slain, but a sophisticated mythic exploration of the nature of sin and evil, the power of human choice and freedom, the secret Providence of God and its interplay with free will. Fleming Rutledge’s The Battle for Middle-earth: J.R.R. Tolkien’s Divine Design in The Lord of the Rings is not just a superb narrative commentary but a marvelous epic work in itself.

Adam Bede by George Eliot (penname of Mary Ann Evans) was groundbreaking for its compassionate social realism when it was first published in 1859; it was the famous novelist’s first novel, and many think her best. Alexandre Dumas called it “the masterpiece of the century.” I love it for many reasons, primarily the creation of Dinah Morris, the quiet young woman Methodist preacher, who shows such kindness and courage in dealing with the tragically ruined young Hetty Sorrel. The Oxford Classics edition has great notes.

Almost anything by Graham Greene: The End of the Affair, The Power and the Glory, Journey Without Maps, Monsignor Quixote, all of which deal with issues of faith and doubt, fidelity and apostasy, miracles and the mundane.

Almost anything by Elizabeth Goudge. Bestsellers in both Britain and the USA for decades from the 1930s, Goudge’s novels are now largely forgotten but are worth remembering. The series about the Eliot family, The Bird in the Tree, The Herb of Grace (American edition entitled Pilgrim’s Inn) and The Heart of the Family were my favorites for years; I read and reread my mother’s copies for the refreshment of my spirit when I was young. Later I discovered The Scent of Water, wise and compassionate about the discipline of great pain bravely borne. Green Dolphin Street, set partly in the Channel Islands where EG’s mother’s family was from, is both lyrically beautiful and profound; it was made into an Academy Award winning film. The Rosemary Tree is not only a multifaceted novel about the ways self-loathing and resentment can deform our hearts and forgiveness can open us to joy, but a quiet reflection on the hidden power of intercessory prayer.

Almost anything by Charles Williams, who was a member of the Inklings, the Oxford group of writing friends that included C.S. Lewis and Tolkien. He was a devout Christian all his life, but (just to warn you) hardly orthodox: his “metaphysical” novels are deeply strange and reveal his fascination with the occult. In The Greater Trumps, the original Tarot cards and a kind of chess set of mysterious corresponding pieces are discovered to have great supernatural power (a mystical riff on the “dance of heaven” and the music of the spheres). Descent into Hell explores Williams’ famous theological notions about “co-inherence” and substituted love, the actual ways in which we can bear one another’s burdens. (Speaking of the Inklings, a charming contemporary novel that features them and is also a delightful story about Arthurian lore is David Downing’s Looking for the King.)

W. Somerset Maugham’s novel The Painted Veil concerns itself with love in a time of cholera (China in 1925)—love and hate, life and death, fidelity and betrayal, forgiveness and redemption. The film of the same name is, unusually, even better at teasing out the moral and religious themes. 

Vipers’ Tangle by François Mauriac is usually considered Mauriac’s masterpiece: a subtle study of a bitter dying man’s transformation and redemption. It begins as a letter to the man’s estranged wife, detailing why he hates her and their children, and becomes a record of the effects of grace on a heart so twisted and poisonous it resembles a knot of serpents. 

Dorothy Sayers’ The Man Born to Be King is a radio-play cycle on the life of Christ commissioned by the BBC—not a novel at all—but it is amazing. When I first read it years ago it sent me back to the Gospels themselves to see if they really contained the power and beauty she claimed for the narratives. (They do.) Be sure to read her introduction and production notes even if you don’t actually read the plays.

Frederic Buechner’s Godric tells the story of a 12th century Christian hermit who lived in a bend of the River Wear near Durham in the north of England. In Buechner’s hands, this hagiography comes alive, making fierce asceticism and a longing for holiness the stuff of sinewy poetry. A finalist for the Pulitzer Prize, read it aloud for the power of the language.

The Betrothed by the Italian Alessandro Manzoni is the only novel the fellow wrote, but it made him as famous and beloved in Italy as Dickens is in England. A riveting historical novel by any standard, its descriptions of the plague that struck Milan in 1630 are unmatched. A powerful novel of love and sacrifice, courage and cowardice, outlaws and heroes (and of course the star-crossed young lovers of the title).

The Seed and the Sower by Laurens van der Post is a trio of related short stories dealing with prisoners of war in a Japanese camp. The title story, the middle one, is an extraordinary depiction of the broken relationship of two brothers evocative of Cain and Abel with a whisper of Christ: treachery and redemption through self-offered suffering love.

And from this side of the Atlantic:

Peace Like a River by Leif Enger is one of a very small handful of books I admire so much I wish I had written them. I don’t know any other work of fiction that more skillfully or honestly or movingly rings the changes on miracles and mystery, on family love and healing and our hope of heaven—and also of the sometimes helplessly tragic consequences of our choices. A subsequent novel, Virgil Wander, is very nearly as good (which is not faint praise).

Ordinary Grace by William Kent Krueger is an unusually compassionate and nuanced coming-of-age novel. Now middle-aged, the narrator remembers one particularly charged summer of his youth: a series of violent deaths mark the season, and moral imagination frames the remembering.

Jayber Crow by Wendell Berry is suffused with the author’s trademark agrarian ethic within a luminous framework of fidelity in the face of unrequited love, quiet integrity in the face of soul- and community-destroying greed and ambition. Elegantly and tenderly written. 

Father Melancholy’s Daughter by Gail Godwin and its “sequel” Evensong introduce us to Margaret, the motherless daughter of a sad Episcopal priest in a small town in the South. Respectful, insightful and honest about family and church life, more sophisticated and nuanced than the Mitford series by Jan Karon (which I also enjoyed).

In The Monk Downstairs and The Monk Upstairs, Tim Farrington introduces us to a single mother who decides to rent her basement apartment to an introverted monk who has left the monastery after twenty years. Farrington deals masterfully with what might be clichéd material in lesser hands: this is a charming love story and a clear look at the challenges of family life. A third book in the series, The Lazarus Kid, is more daring but no less skillful in its exploration of faith and love, family and mystery. And Farrington’s standalone novel Slow Work (about a troubled gravestone-carver who learns the slow work of grief and healing in lives as hard and flawed as stone) is even more mature.

From All False Doctrine and Neither Have I Wings by Alice Degan, a young Canadian Anglo-Catholic academic and writer, wife and mother. She describes her books as “metaphysical romances” and so they are, among other things. Part charming old-fashioned romance, part academic detective novel, part riveting depiction of spiritual warfare, part conversion story, part ghost story with a whiff of magical realism, these books are like nothing else I’ve ever read—as if Graham Greene and Charles Williams had collaborated for a lark.

In This House of Brede by Rumer Godden is a remarkable novel about a woman with a troubled past who becomes a nun in mid-life. Unsentimental about the demands and the rewards of a disciplined religious practice and vowed community life, and the surprising consequences of a life offered to God.

The Nun’s Story by Kathryn Hulme. Like the award-winning film of the same name, starring a young Audrey Hepburn, but naturally in more depth and with more subtlety, this novel tells the (true) story of a brilliant, ardent, strong-willed young Belgian woman between the world wars who enters a convent in order to serve as a nurse among the poor in the Congo. A fascinating glimpse of religious formation in a pre-Vatican II church, and a thoughtful exploration of the cost of discerning one’s true vocation.

The Enchanted April by Elizabeth von Arnim is a witty, shrewd and delightful account of four English women who rent a castle in Italy for a holiday, the book (and the film by the same name based upon it) raise themes of love and forgiveness, the relinquishment of grievance, and the redemptive power of beauty. Could be cross-referenced with books about relationships (friendship and marriage).

The Abbey by James Martin SJ is a gentle introduction and invitation to a monastic retreat, for those who have never made one but are intrigued by the possibility, by way of a sweet story by a prolific and engaging American Jesuit.

The Edge of Sadness by Edwin O’Connor is both a portrait of a wealthy Irish-American Catholic family (whose patriarch is slowly revealed to be a flint-hearted tyrant who systematically blights his children’s lives) and a study of a religious vocation lost and found, a mid-life crisis bravely endured, a weary priest who rediscovers hope and purpose. Now almost forgotten, the novel won a Pulitzer Prize when it was published in 1961.

Gilead, Home, and Lila are loosely linked novels by Marilynne Robinson that gently explore the quiet lives of several people in a small town, connected by love and loss, betrayal and fidelity, faith and sorrow. Even more than those books, I love Housekeeping, a standalone novel that is penetrating and dream-like, haunting and deeply moving in its tracing of the lives of two orphaned sisters.

Literary Recommendations for All Sorts of Times and States of Mind