All Quiet On The Orient Express: A Novel

Rating:
Summary: Parable about Isolation
Review: An unnamed narrator tells us he's about to embark on a quest to visit the Orient but he must, he explains, get his scooter repaired so he waits in a sort of limbo at pastoral campsite on the edges of a small town that is lorded over by the imperious Mr. Parker, a capitalistic patriarch who is at the center of all the town's commerce. Mr. Parker has a lovely daughter who arouses our narrator's senses but merely titilates him. One mishap after another makes the narrator feel obliged to stay longer in the town even though he keeps reminding us--and himself--that he wants to break free and begin his exotic travels. His major impediment to leaving, he would have us believe, is Mr. Parker, a brutal, intimidating man who demands that the narrator do all sorts of chores and odd-jobs for him, but gradually we realize that the narrator is afraid to adventure out of his comfort zone and would rather live in the relative prison of Mr. Parker's campsite tent, with its severely limiting rules, than inch his way into the flux of the vital, real, outside world. Thus the novel's theme is the conflict between our need to branch out and challenge ourselves vs. our tendency to roll up into the fetal position and die a spiritual death in our tiny world of comfort and familiarity. This theme is further explored in Mills' subsequent novel Three to See the King.

Rating:
Summary: Held My Interest
Review: I really didn't feel that they was much of a plot to this story but what surprised me is how I was able to read it during one weekend and it actually held my interest. Our unnamed hero is virtually thrown into bondage after painting a fence for the campground owner where he was supposed to be on Holiday. He is given more odd jobs by his landlord and is eventually roped into doing his daughters homework. He plays darts at the pub and is on and off the dart team at will. The town locals extend credit to him but his landlord never makes any mention to his wages. He eventually takes over the milk route after the death of the current milkman and nobody seems to question the circumstances of the milkman's death. I have many unanswered questions about this book and the ending but I do recommend reading it.

Rating:
Summary: Strange but intriguing.
Review: Strange story about a young man who decides to take a short camping trip before heading off to explore India. However, while he's camping, the campground's owner asks him if he'd do an odd job in exchange for the camping fees he owed. Soon that odd job is leading to even ODDER odd jobs and before he knows it, he's moved in and started working full-time. But something about the whole thing feels really strange. First, there's all that green paint. Then there's a convenient death. This book really held my attention -- in fact, I read it in one sitting -- but I was disappointed in the ending. It almost seemed like Mills was on a strict deadline and just had to stop working when he got to the end of it, whether he was done with the story or not. At the same time, something about the novel's tone makes me wonder if he didn't do that on purpose just to disappoint the readers. Some kind of satire of contrived sinister-ness? Hard to say, but I'm definitely intrigued and will look for his earlier novel, The Restraint of Beasts.