The Magus by John Fowles Summary and Reviews
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Book Reviews of The Magus
Book Review: Confusingly good
Summary: 3 Stars
The Magus is an increadibly well written piece of confusion. There is not a singly chapter where you can honestly say, I understand the plot and know where this is going. This is very exciting for about 3 quarters of the bookk. Then it just becomes infuriating ending in an incomprehensible ending. This book is very suitable for romantics, but for most people (including myself) it is a disappointing and difficult read.Book Review: Reality check
Summary: 5 Stars
This book is a ride into the unknown. Be prepared to be deceived, puzzled, amazed, aroused... this is a masterpiece in absurdism and surrealism. The Greek island of Spetses is the perfect setting for the drama which continually unfolds, each chapter peeling off like the skin of an onion, revealing even more uncertainty and mystery. I do not recommend this book to everyone. For those who prefer linear and predictable genres, this will not be for you. For those who wish to go on a journey into the unknown, who wish to lose all sense of the 'truth' then this is definitely the book for you.Book Review: Prepare to have your head well and truly messed with!
Summary: 5 Stars
This book blew my mind. The vast number of twists and turns well and truly made sure that I couldn't put the damn thing down!The characters in this book are so vivid (and very disliakable in most cases) that even several months after finnishing it (and about 30 books later) I still can't get them out of my head. I must point out though, that I appear to be one of the few people (having read the other reviews) that actually didn't dislike Nicholas Urfe. He was a twenty-something, single young man and, it appeared to me, was behaving like any other twenty-something, single young man. In actual fact, I disliked the women in his life much more. Both Alison and Lily/Julie/Dr Maxwell irritated me far more (and lied and cheated far more too).
This book absorbed and gripped me so much that when Nicholas' life was put on trial at the end I was absolutely livid for him. Rarely does a book draw you in so much that you actually feel a characters pain and humiliation so deeply.
I was slightly disappointed at the end (but this may well have had alot to do with the fact that I was gutted it was finnished), but I still spend many a moment even now wanting to know what happened to Conchis and Lily and Rose etc. Where did they go? How did they get off so lightly?
I'm sure this book will haunt me for years to come, and then I will have to pick it up and read it again. I cannot recommend this highly enough. Pick it up and you won't be able to put it down. But prepare yourself for a real head mess.......
Book Review: Fourth read - 25 years on. How stands the hill?
Summary: 5 Stars
I have just read the Magus again, for the first time in about 7-8 years. It's the fourth time I've read the book now and I enjoy the different perspectives I get from it in relation to my own life experiences and how the book, its characters, incidents and themes now plays against the world we currently live in.I've commented before on my general views of this book and the considerable effect it has had on me over the years. Rather than go over old ground in my reflections of it, I'd like to encapsulate my reactions to it as a reader in summer 2003, at the age of 47; about 25 years after I first read it.
Several things stand out:
For the first time it reads as a period novel. Not surprising given that it was published close on 40 years ago and takes place exactly 50 years ago. I say this not as a criticism; it is in fact all the better for it.
Reading it this time, I realised forcibly how the influence of political correctness has really taken hold of writing and thinking over the last decade. There are parts of The Magus that you know would simply not have been written as they are if first published today. This is no bad thing; I'm not entirely in favour of all aspects of PC (to quote Conchis, it needs to 'learn to smile'); but Nicholas's reactions to race and women in particular now brand him so much a creature of his time in ways that hadn't fully struck me before. His constant references to Joe as the 'Negro', his frequent intimidation and even violence towards women; these aspects for the first time conjure up a culturally far-away world - making The Magus now very much a novel of its time, despite the undoubted timelessness and universality of most of its themes. (And yes, I know that the book is, ultimately, a riposte to sexism and racism, and in many ways heralds an era of racial and sexual enlightenment long before it ever actually came about.)
I was also aware of how the book needs the literal remoteness of its time for Chonchis's 'godgame' to feasibly work. Can you imagine Nicholas being so successfully duped in this modern era of high-tech information technology; how he could possibly have had all his lines of enquiry stifled if he had a PC, internet access, e-mail and mobile phone so easily to hand? Not to mention thousands of tourists charging around his timeless island retreat! In the global village that we now live in the 1950s stands as the last era of genuine physical remoteness in the world (John Fowles briefly reflects on this in his 1976 revised edition).
I realise now that many of Conchis's philosophical musings are so much hot air and deliberate obfuscation. In the past I took his sayings seriously, now I think they're funny - and meant to be funny! He's just playing with gullible, pretentious young Nicholas.
The Magus remains a wonderfully engaging and thought provoking read. The ability to pick it up at after many years and either get new things from it or react to it in different ways is one of its great joys. These reactions tell you a lot about yourself, and the world we live in, and how both have changed over the years. It really is a book for life, which should be first encountered young and then taken out and enjoyed sparingly but profoundly.
Book Review: a different read
Summary: 4 Stars
Captivating...couldn`t put it down.I strongly recomment it.