The Magus

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Summary: London turns the godgame into a waiting game
Review: Like most reviewers, I read it from cover to cover without stopping to breathe. I waited for a resolution as compelling as the Greek scenes. However, as Nicholas found, dreary London overwhelms the pace and imagination of the earlier parts of the novel, turning the godgame into the waiting game. While I accept that endless hanging around between a few glorious moments of clarity is what life does to us all, Fowles suggested that there is an alternative, and then failed to show us what it was. Pervigilium Veneris is an unsatisfactory and simplistic conclusion.

Equally compelling and well written, but with the structure and intellectual depth to do more than simply hobble past the finishing post, I would recommend The Discovery of Heaven by Harry Mullisch to all who enjoyed The Magus.

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Summary: So...what he's trying to say is...
Review: At times compelling, intriguing, and down right scary, the story is one worth telling. But is it worth reading? Although the prose was beautiful, it was too often bogged down at the worst times. Whenever Nick would find a clue or find himself in trouble, I'd get so excited and read on and on, but all of a sudden find myself reeling in heavy handed interior monologue. I've been told these rambling thoughts and run on descriptions are simply the author's way of showing the character's immaturity. Fine, but I started to get annoyed with Nick, and soon I wanted him tied up, flogged, and feathered. I found him to be a very weak foil used to point out human weakness; any well conceived character would've had a clue by the first 200 pages to hoist up the white flag and call it a day. For that matter the reader should too, or else skim the first 150 pages, read 100, skim 100, read some more to catch on, skim a bit, and then read the last five.

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Summary: My favorite book
Review: I love this book. I recommend it to everyone I care about. I think the journeys this book takes your mind on are incredible. I will always thank my old English teacher, Mr. Voorhees, for recommending this book to me, it's his favorite too. When you read it though, give it at least 100 pages becuase it starts out slow, and by about 60 pages starts to pick up the mental pace. Challenge the way you perceive reality, read this!

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Summary: A good feeling
Review: When I read the customer reviews it just please me that so many people shared my feelings about this book.It really takes a grip on you,and I think it`s very simple.It`s about LOVE.Wonderful

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Summary: Godgames and Mindgames
Review: I never thought there can be book like this ! I've read it first time about 3 years ago, and during the past 2 years I re-read it 5 times ! I think it will stay with me forever. It has a lot of things "to think of", great style and very specific emotional atmosphere. Quite an obsessive book:), anyway, I got very obsessed. Wow, how I love it ! Thank you Mr Fowles ! And I must also thank translators, who did fantastic Russian translation of this wonderful story !

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Summary: It is "Why" not "What"
Review: The Magus is a big, intricate, mysterious novel. Much has been written about it. Reviewers and casual readers seem to gravitate to one of two basic underlying themes: (1) a tale of love or (2) a treatise on freedom of will. I think this is because these are the only two constants apparent throughout the book. I also believe that both themes are true. After reading The Aristos, Fowles' philosophic thoughts, I think that, while one or the other themes are very real, the author's reason for writing the book had more to do with exploring the effects of the energy created by the anxieties produced by Conchis' "god-game".

In The Aristos, Fowles philosophizes that the tension created by that which is unknown is a very powerful motivator to individual action. The specific actions are interesting only in the context of Fowles' moral belief that man should do that which is "best for our situation at this time". In following Nicholas' behaviors given the dozens of situations presented him in both the contrived "god-game" and in his real life love affair, Fowles is implicitly prodding the reader to measure these actions against this "best" yardstick.

For the reader, this can be ultimately fun. My experience first reading the book was not fun. I, like other readers, wondered not why the book was what it was, but what tied the improbable, fantastic twists and turns together. Hence, a leap to some moral - that love is not a game, that the freedom to choose is the ultimate freedom and ultimate responsibility, that the effects of choice and action are "real" no matter how surreal the situation.

But I don't think the author cared a whit about the moral of the book. I think Fowles could have put Nicholas in the same situations and had him make totally different choices without sacrificing his rationale for writing The Magus. I believe that Fowles felt that transmitting Nicholas' angst to the reader was of some value. If he could motivate the reader to feel the Nicholas' tension and reflect personally, in hindsight, on Nicholas' resultant actions, then that was enough.

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Summary: 5am, blanket over your head, kinda book
Review: The reviewers below said it; this is an utterly gripping bookwhich you continue to read whilst you should be at work/class/in bed.The characters are beguiling and fascinating and you really have no idea what is going to happen next. The ending, however, makes me think that the author had a pressing engagement just as he was about to finish the book; it made me think of school time stories of "...and suddenly I woke up". That aside, it is definately worth reading...a fabulous book.

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Summary: A non-pareil exploration of the human mind
Review: In a word: my favorite book of all time. Different, yet stunningly instructive,every time I read it. This is a book with multiple layers...you have to work to find them all, but the effort will be magical, mind-expanding, psychoanalytical ,suspenseful, mysterious, even chilling. One of the most intricate books-- it contains plots and sub-plots--enjoy this book on any or all levels. This book provides insights into both the human mind, and the human heart

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Summary: An enlightment
Review: This is a book encompassing just about every other book you will ever read. It is about thruth and imagination, about the limit between reality and fiction, theatre and real life. About youth, about wisdom, about god and faith, about braveness and treachery. But most of all, following me, about love. How one has to protect it and defend it. About the strugle and the suffering once you've lost it... We are all little Urfe's, Fowles' art consists of making you feel this story was written just for you.

When Nicholas rejects Allison in Athenes, we, male readers, pity her but think that this is the way things often go in adolescent relationships. Nicholas probably feels the same. And yet, as the stage is being set up to show him among so many other things the cruelty of his deeds, we start just like him to regret the way things happened and the way we thought about them. And like often the case, this ultimate enlightment might come to late...but then again maybe not,...

Just simply the most enriching book i've read so far

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Summary: Engrossing exploration of love, betrayal and accountability
Review: It's been a few years since I read The Magus, so the details are a little fuzzy in my mind. However, what is important is that I remember very well the impact that the book had on me: it shocked me and made me look at myself in great detail, which is a very rare thing in a work of literature.

Fowles is the greatest post-war English author and one of the greats of the twentieth century, a real literary heavyweight. Although The Collector was published first, The Magus was the first novel that Fowles wrote, and it is an amazingly ambitious effort. The novel encompasses Greek tragedy, the absence of moral responsibility and accountability in war-time and the unacceptably laissez faire attitude to morality that has become increasingly prevalent in modern Western culture. He exposes his fairly mediocre protagonist to all sorts of intellectual and moral tests, and truly dazzles the reader with the breadth of his ideas and the depth of his insight into morality. The psychological torture that Nicholas is subjected to in order to learn his lesson is fascinatingly cruel and you can't help feeling sorry for him by the end - he really doesn't understand what has happened to him.

And the denouement is astonishing.