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Summary: Cras amet qui nunquam amavit; quique amavit, cras amet
Review: May he love tomorrow who has never loved before; and may he who has loved, love tomorrow as well.One of my all time favorite novels. Just finished reading Alain-Fournier's Les Grande Meaulnes (Fowles' inspiration for The Magus) this morning...Wonderful and highly recommended!
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Summary: You hate it or like it - but you'll read it all!
Review: I noticed something when I read the reviews... people either hate it or love this book.
However: I noticed something interesting: even the ones who said they HATED it had one thing in common: they all read it from COVER to COVER! Makes you think, doesn't it?
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Summary: A teasing, enthralling fantasy
Review: I have loved this book for most of my life. I was introduced to it at the age of 15 or so, and stayed up most of the night to finish it the first time. Years later, I wrote an undergraduate honors thesis on it for Harvard, and received a magna cum laude for my efforts. (You can get a copy of the text of my thesis at the Fatbrain Ematters web site.) That being said, I give this book 4 stars because Fowles has done better (clearly with _The French Lieutenant's Woman_, perhaps with _Daniel Martin_ and other more recent works), although it would merit 5 stars if almost anyone else had written it. It's an early novel, an adolescent novel in many ways (and Fowles has all but said as much himself). There are stretches of magnificent writing -- short stories within a larger framing plot, such as the Norway sequence and the Nazis on Phraxos -- as well as over-the-top farcicality and a bit of dime-store philosophy that may or may not impress. Consider the missing star a warning, as well. This is a three-ring circus of a book; it teases the reader, leads him or her down garden paths and then repeatedly pulls the rug out. Some people find this infuriating, the rest of us love it.
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Summary: magus revisited
Review: Perhaps the best thing about Fowle's revised edition of The Magus is his new introduction, in which he discusses the novel in some detail. Since its original publication 35 years ago, The Magus has inspired legions of fans and no small number of readers who are still asking, "What was that?" Having read both versions, I prefer the latter, but there is not a huge difference between the two. The new introduction, however, provides some fascinating insights into a novel that continues to amaze and perplex readers, including this one. If you haven't read it yet, I strongly recommend The Magus. But be prepared - the novel will lull you in with lush descriptions of the Greek Isles before blowing your mind with Urfe's bizarre encounter with intrigue, betrayal, and ultimately (perhaps?) redemption.
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Summary: The Magus
Review: I have read this book 4 times over the past 30 years. I have yet been able to put it down before finishing. Every time I start it, I fantasize that the ending will be different this time. After visiting Greece for the first time this fall, I couldn't get the book out of my mind. Every time we'd pass a remote vila, I was plunged into the magic of the story. I'd love to get hold of the video movie version with Anthony Quinn.
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Summary: This is a great book!
Review: This book is fascinating. Reading The Magus has inspired me to reexamine the way I think about everything. Any more of a review would not be fitting to the book, except that you should read it.
Rating:
Summary: Unputdownable
Review: If there were ever a justification for the addition of the word "unputdownable" to the Oxford English Dictionary this book presents it. I actually missed a day of work in my fruitless attempts to remove my eyes from its pages. As stated in a previous review, the author manages to draw the reader into the mysteries of the novel in such a way that they are fused with the main character, Nicholas Urfe. I found the constant shifting sands of the plot compelling and thought provoking and was moved by the evocative descriptions of the Greek landscape. The characters in all their duplicity are drawn with exquisite skill and sublety. A haunting novel which will resonate long after turning the final page.
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Summary: Eye-rolling groaner for any woman with a sex life
Review: Picked it up this year when it made several best-of-the-century lists and slogged my way through it, hoping it would get better. It didn't. Poe could have done the first 3rd of the book in 3 pages. Nor did I find the riddles engaging. I found it to be a adolescent male fantasy unredeemed by any but the shallowest reflection. Romance - I don't think so. I, who long to see the Greek Isles, found no charm in the descriptions. Relationships - Not. The only relationships in the book are with one's self. There was no honest communication with another in the entire novel. Was that the point? The novel suffers terribly from its 1960's setting. Yea, I know it was post-war, but it has 1960's all over it.
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Summary: A profound and compelling mystery of love, life, illusion.
Review: A book that will stand the test of time. Two hundred years from now it will still be read, studied, analyzed, pondered. For it is a work on many levels. A compelling mystery; the evolution of its protagonist; the overlap and blurring of meaning -- of what is real, what myth; a sense of the wonder and the danger of existence; of nature and landscape as player in the drama; of transformation. Wonderfully written, deep,complex and beautiful throughout. Certainly some will find it obscure, even silly, contrived. It is not a book for the Bevis & Butthead clones. But I daresay anyone with depth, with a soul, will be drawn to it and read it again and again. It is, in short, a damn fine book.
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Summary: John Fowles as Masterful Magus
Review: Fowles offers a work that weaves insight, intrigue and continuous engagement. The central questions of The Magus remain inscribed on the reader long after finished. It is a ceasless labyrinth that places human values into question. How are truth, freedom, and love to be understood if not by the constructions we assign to them? What are these constructions to mean once we've realized what they ultimately represent? In between sleep and awake, what is considered reality and illusion, 'understanding' is to be conjured by the magician. The Magus awaits to be read and meditated. For just as the child who finds delight and amazement by the trick where a coin is revealed behind her ear, this work will innocently mystify you.
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