Rating: 
Summary: An attempt at heaviness that shouldn't fool anyone
Review: This is one of the worst books I've read in 20 years. Maybe the symbolism and mysticism were too heavy for my intellect. Then again, maybe I demand that authors possess the basic skills to render complicated subjects comprehensible and, at the very least, readable. I can picture Fowles grinding out this piece of pretentious tripe utterly convinced that he was fashioning a work of depth and mystery. Nope. He produced a book devoid of engaging plot lines, interesting characters or believable scenes. If you loved Carlos Castaneda's "Don Juan" series, this is the book for you. Don't be fooled into thinking it's a great book because it leaves you baffled. That's the mark of a poor book, not a good one.
Rating: 
Summary: absolutely original and a wonderfully complicated plot!
Review: I'm not going to pretend that I am an educated book reviewer. But to anyone who has ever wanted to be completely baffled and magnetized by a book, I suggest that you read The Magus. Fowles speaks to the scholar in all of us; he gives us complex characters, includes dialogues in five different languages throughout the story (and only translates the greek), and includes revelations between the characters that he doesn't bother to explain, but rather blithely continues on, sometimes leaving the reader in the dust, wondering what they missed. And I'm leaving out the fact that it is the most bizarre story I've ever read. Like I said, I'm not an experienced reviewer, just a 19 yr old college student, but I hold this book in high esteem, and I believe it is most definitely worth two or three readings.
Rating:
Summary: Mysterious and Seductive
Review: I read The Magus four years ago, at age 20, and I am still trying to convince others of it's greatness. In the grand tradition of Dostoyevsky, it is a novel which delves into the human psyche, without losing any of the strength of the story. The novel is both seductive and enthralling. One of the great masterpieces of the 20th century.
Rating: 
Summary: interesting and different, but perhaps too long.
Review: this story of intrique, suspense and betrayal is beautifully written. the prose style is typical of fowles: poetic and lyrical. an intriguing story of a man in search of his soul, the meaning of love. however, the story loses momentum as it sometimes becomes too long and static. the reader's attention can be lost at times in the slower passages.overall, well written, inspiring; but could be shorter.
Rating:
Summary: A bored man searches for meaning.
Review: Nicholas Urfe is a 20-something Oxford-educated English teacher who--in the early 1950s--grows quickly bored with his surroundings--both physical and intellectual--in native Britain, and finds himself advertising for a position for which he is prepared to "go anywhere" and "do anything." He soon finds himself in an interview for--and is accepted as--an English teacher in a private school on a remote Greek Island. On the island--with weekends free from what he soon finds as uncaptivating work at the school--he wanders about the island. Though most of the island is inhabitated by the Greek peasant, he finds at some remove a well-appointed large house...in it, he soon discovers is a most mysterious well-travelled rich man. This is no ordinary story of bored young fella finding some interesting conversation on the weekends with a well-educated stranger...it turns out the stranger is a most brilliant and enignmatic man who arranges events to help lift Mr. Urfe from his smallish existence. And Mr. Urfe, understanding a bit that he is in for a truly amazing adventure, submits to the strange activities that occur in and around the man's Bourani estate, all the time thinking that he more or less understands what's going on. It turns out he understands much less than he thinks, and the web of intrigue begins to mystify him. He wants to quit for all the confusion, but wants to stay for all the stimulation. He's played by experts, though, and the psychological drama is bound to continue...and does until the very last page.
Rating: 
Summary: An irrestistably seductive tale. It will haunt you.
Review: Fowles uses fantasy and romance not to enchant, but to ensnare, and then he confronts and challenges. Words that come to mind upon reflecting on The Magus are exotic, fantastic and outlandish. Fowles is unlike any other writer I have ever read in his ability to weave an intelligent and singularly mysterious tale. An extraordinary read.
Rating:
Summary: A wonderful,beautiful,mysterious,great novel.
Review: I read the Magus when I was around nineteen years old.It was one of several books that a psychiatrist friend of mine gave me to read.At that time I was recovering from being trapped in TV and comic book land,and had only read a hand full of Hardy-Boys and other equivelent things ie. nothing of the great or even good lierary classics.The books he gave me included Heinlein,D.H.Lawrence,Dostoyevsky,Joyce etc.The first one I read was John Fowles, The Magus.It was terrific!It had mystery,eroticsm,adventure,travel,intrigue and suspense.It combined astonishing intellectual power and subtle and insightful emotionalism.To me,it had everything one expects to find in a great novel,this was no cheap fiction to spoon feed to the masses for easy success.Highly recommended,esp. if you are mid-teens through your late twenties.
Rating:
Summary: The magic of book itself is magnified by the readers youth
Review: An old, ragged copy of the Magus was handed to me about four years ago by a friend and co-worker ten years older than myself. I was a twenty-one year old man from a tiny town in western Mass, poor and essentially uneducated. She was a thirty-one year old lesbian musician from Colorado. We would talk of anything because we knew nothing of each other's day to day lives and forever will the gorgeous aesthetic of that book be connected within me to her memory. The Magus is a complicated and confusing novel, you probably should keep handy a dictionary or even an encyclopedia, but it is just that density of its weave that enchants the young who may feel as if they are being challenged to understand. Fowles complexity becomes unquestionable, necessary, like the word of a god, unable to falter, like a father spinning a tale to educate his children in order to prepare them for the precariosness of their lives to come. To the aged who can challenge Fowles motives and composition I believe the book is lost. Buy this and give it to the young people you know and watch them grow from out of the book's tangled snare stronger and wiser than their peers on a fundamental level at which Fowles truly intended the book to be interpretted.
Rating:
Summary: Yet another "Best Book I've Read" - Also a Roller-Coaster!
Review: The worst literature deals in shades of black & white. Better literature finds everything is varying shades of gray. But the best - count "The Magus" - show how confusing life can be; that often it cannot be classified, that the "rating" changes depending on context/perspective/compassion/etc. My first reading, about 25 years ago, was incredibly exhilirating but still very confusing. My second reading, last year, was much less confusing but still a marvel of surprise. I was able to spend more attention appreciating John Fowles craftsmanship. I can understand other readers marching to a different drummer and not "liking" the novel, but I can't understand a 1 or 2 rating - there's too much depth, mystery, quality, etc. to consign to any slag heap. But I loved reading all the reviews. A great feature of the site.
Rating:
Summary: Excellent, but less so the second time round
Review: I first read The Magus when I was 21 and it was the best book I had read up to that point. Last year I re-read it (age 29), and while I still enjoyed it greatly, it felt a little contrived. Any one else out there read this a second time after a long interlude?
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