The Magus by John Fowles Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of The Magus
Book Review: Dated and long
Summary: 4 Stars
In terms of involvement, I should have read this back when I was reading Hesse and I would have stayed numb and giddy with insight. It's a book of its time, when we were soul searching. I not only think Nicholas doesn't resonate with the present, I think, for all his internalizing, he is not a character whose situation is easy to relate to . . . now. Only Alison comes to life but then that is later undermined. The plot gets lost in an unbelieveable number of impossible coincidences and phantom-like characters. Still, I kept reading waiting for the eroticism to kick into gear (it doesn't), or to feel Nicholas surface above his narcissism . . . . I read it because it was mentioned in a recent review to Jennifer Egan's The Keep, which does fulfil its promise.Book Review: Eh...
Summary: 3 Stars
Fowles has written much better books; I would recommend this one only to people who already like reading him, and want to read even his weaker works. The book has some good moments, and one memorable setting, but that's not enough to sustain a 700 page novel. At half the length, it would have been a very impressive first novel, but...The basic premise is attractive: while conspiracies and webs of deceit are usually malicious, conspiracies _against_ someone, this book points out that (especially if you're a self-absorbed young man) it can be pretty cool to be the focus of a conspiracy of rich intelligent people, especially if one (or two or three) of them are beautiful and sexually uninhibited women.
But that's about it; the premise is there, the lovely Greek island is there, but they just sit there. We have 400 or so pages of slow setup, a couple hundred pages of slightly quicker development and mystery, and then a final hundred pages of dull thud as we find that after undergoing a novel's worth of life-changing experiences the protagonist hasn't changed perceptibly, and is still the basically uninteresting jerk he started out as.
The motivations of the conspirators are never really explained. Or rather the explanation is so implausible that it doesn't count; these people would not have gone to all that trouble for this guy.
So I got some nice images and new mental structures out of it, but I think my time would have been better spent elsewhere. It's hard to recommend a book when my first thought after finishing it was "whew, finally! Now I can go on and read something better."
The Latin passage at the end is from Pervigilium Veneris; Parnell's translation is "Let those love now who never loved before; Let those who always loved, now love the more." And that's not really a spoiler IMHO; we still don't know what happened... *8)
Book Review: Fantastic
Summary: 5 Stars
I wish I could go back in time to the point where I hadn't read the Magus, and I envy anyone who picks it up for the first time.
Shortly after we are introduced to Maurice Conchis, the magician behind The Magus, he declares the novel dead as an art form. But then author John Fowles then proceeds to show just how lively a book can be. Fowles uses words that couldn't be found in my dictionary, but I found the narrative impossible to put down.
I felt in league with narrator Nicholas Urfe -- we both knew we were being toyed with and we sought an explanation that wasn't forthcoming, but the drama Conchis and Fowles created for us were so delicious that we want it to go on forever. And that I suppose is the point.
Book Review: Fun and thought provoking
Summary: 5 Stars
I read this book several times over years ago. I felt a little guilty about liking it as much as I did since it has been criticized as not being a first-rate piece of literature. I was fascinated and couldn't put it down. I must say that as much as I liked the heroine, Alison, she didn't seem fully drawn to me and there was something stereotypical, and less than fully human about her. I think that is because while the author chides Nicholas for not appreciating the inner beauty of this flawed ordinary woman, he is still a bit like Nicholas himself, and while he feels he should be more appreciative of this "real" woman, he really isn't. I could really relate to Alison's point of view that Nicholas was simply showing his superficiality in preferring the rich woman, but who knows, I guess the men have their point of view. As far as I'm concerned this book portrays the mindset of the average male a lot better than "He's just not that into you."Book Review: Great Read
Summary: 5 Stars
This book was a bit slow at first, but after about the first 100 pages it was impossible to put down. The ending was completely maddening, and I still think about it often.