The Magus by John Fowles Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of The Magus
Book Review: A bizarre tale with many twists and turns
Summary: 4 Stars
I was given this book as a teenager by a Greek friend. He told me the book was about Greece! With this in mind I started reading the novel. The novel describes in great detail a small, traditional Greek island and conjures up perfectly the image of an ex-pat's life on a lonely Greek island. What happens to him on the island is almost like living within a fairy tale. The story really takes off when Conchis's domain is entered and I found that after that I couldn't put the book down. The story is definitely Greek in flavour with lots of theatrical ancient Greek style drama and tragedy. Conchis resmbles a Greek God who has a far-reaching effect on Nicholas's life. The last 200 pages left me flabbergasted. This is a fantastic fast moving novel that reveals more and more each time you read it. Thank you EthymiusBook Review: Just go read it
Summary: 5 Stars
A wonderful book - beautiful atmosphere - a plot that throws you around - an experience you won't easily forget. Just go read it.Book Review: a book that shook my world
Summary: 5 Stars
The other reviews are all correct - even the reviewer who panned it for being very English and middle class. Perhaps, being English and middle class myself, it had a greater resonance for me, but ... errr ... notwithstanding that, The Magus remains an exceptionally well written and engrossing story which has the power to bring dormant archetypes to life.Reading it in my early twenties was for me, like a bomb going off somewhere deep inside. The magic of this book is how it would spill over into my reality. It would colour my own view of the world and my relationships for quite some time. Strangers would look at me reading it, give me a strange look and say 'I envy you'. Stuff like that.
Good work Mr Fowles and whichever muses inspired you.
Book Review: Layer upon layer of fantasy
Summary: 5 Stars
Marvellous stuff, I've read this on the island (Spetsai) where it is set, that's an experience. Book a flight, buy a copy at the airport, go sit on the beach and live it. There is a movie if you're interested, Michael Caine plays Urfe (My name is Urfe, Nicholas Urfe) and Anthony Quinn is Conchis.
I had Montgomery Burns down for Conchis.
A marvellous tale, surely one of the best ever told.
Book Review: If only Urfe kept himself to himself
Summary: 2 Stars
I completely agree with the reader from Wellington, Somerset. the book is about a middle class man who can't create relationships with women unless they are like nymphets just waiting for him to love them. The book is so sexist, and I'm not even a feminist. All the woman are just little silly girls, prancing around on the beach in fairy-like clothes, wholly viewed from the sexual eye of this under-developed Oxford guy. The only character who barely had any resemblance to real life women was Alison, and she was portrayed as a hysterical woman, demanding commitment as if she wished a death sentence on over-sensitive Urfe. Urfe leaves her, typically, for the nymph twins. Why? Because he's a truly weak man with no view of women apart from them serving as sex objects, deep down. Alison is acceptable to him at first because, he says, unlike so many English girls "she never betrayed her gender". This means basically that Urfe views women as not being able to be humans in front of him, but have to potray themselves as willowy-type fairies that have come to give him pleasure. A really boring book, basically, but I can see why male middle-class teenagers and early twenties love it; they all want a silent little goddess... Two stars are given for at least trying to copy what Master and Margerita by Bulgakov did so much better.