The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia

by Laura Miller

Overview

Enchanted by Narnia's fantastic world as a child, prominent critic Laura Miller returns to the series as an adult to uncover the source of these small books' mysterious power by looking at their creator, Clive Staples Lewis.

What she discovers is not the familiar, idealized image of the author, but a more interesting and ambiguous truth: Lewis's tragic and troubled childhood, his unconventional love life, and his intense but ultimately doomed friendship with J.R.R. Tolkien.

Finally reclaiming Narnia "for the rest of us," Miller casts the Chronicles as a profoundly literary creation, and the portal to a lifelong adventure in books, art, and the imagination.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9780316017657
Publisher:	Little, Brown and Company
Publication date:	12/02/2009
Pages:	312
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.20(h) x 1.00(d)

About the Author

Laura Miller is a journalist and critic. She is a cofounder of Salon.com, where she is currently a staff writer, and is the editor of The Salon.com Readers Guide to Contemporary Authors. A regular contributor to the New York Times Book Review, her work has also appeared in the New Yorker, the Los Angeles Times, Time, and other publications. She lives in New York.

What People are Saying About This

Jonathan Lethem

Conversational, embracing, and casually erudite, Laura Miller's superb long essay is the kind that comes along too rarely, a foray into the garden of one book that opens to the whole world of reading, becoming in the process a subtle reader's memoir, and manifesto. -- (Jonathan Lethem, author of Motherless Brooklyn)

Tom Bissell

To those who have found C. S. Lewis's Narnia books altogether too druidic and allegorical, Laura Miller brings some interesting news: this is true, but it is only true. Along with her fascinating insights into the world of Narnia and the mind that conjured it, Miller provides one of the best explanations I have ever read about why so-called children's literature is so inimitably affecting. This book is both a wonderful antechamber to Lewis's wardrobe portal and a convincing attempt to rescue Aslan from the Christian imagination and embed him where he has always belonged -- the human imagination. -- (Tom Bissell, author of The Father of All Things)

Anita Silvey

In a braided narrative Miller weaves together details about the life of C. S. Lewis, her personal journey with his books, and astute observations about how children and adults read....Anyone who believes in the power of literature will want to savor The Magician’s Book. In the end you feel as if you have had a stimulating literary conversation with a group of very smart and savvy friends. -- (Anita Silvey, author of 100 Best Books for Children)

Karen Joy Fowler

A thorough and thoroughly engrossing look at one reader's lifetime love affair with Narnia. You need not be a Lewis fan nor aficionado to enjoy Miller's book, though a few of your own affairs with imaginary places and people probably help. Smart, meticulous, and altogether delightful. -- (Karen Joy Fowler, author of The Jane Austin Book Club)

Anne Lamott

This is a magical weave of rich soulful criticism, at once a distinctive and insightful biography of C. S. Lewis, and a memoir of the author, who fell in love with Narnia as a wide-eyed young girl, and revisits it as a grown-up. Entering Narnia again, at once apathetic and anxious about its Christian allegory, Miller creates an amazing literary work: in uncovering the vulnerability and limitations of C. S. Lewis, she finds within his pages a limitless and lasting work of imagination and human meaning, for all readers, of all ages and inclinations. I couldn't put it down, even as I felt tremendous anticipation of picking up The Chronicles of Narnia again, forty-five years after I first fell in love with it, too. -- (Anne Lamott, author of Grace (Eventually))

Editorial Reviews

"Empathetic, rigorous, erudite, funny, generous, and surprising....THE MAGICIAN'S BOOK abounds with a rare quality that most literary criticism lacks, the quality of hopeful longing that helped lead C. S. Lewis to imagine Narnia, the quality that he prized above almost all others: joy."—Los Angeles Times

"Weaving together her own life as a reader and C. S. Lewis's life as, among other things, a reader, a writer, a Christian, a veteran of World War I, and a friend to J.R.R. Tolkien, Miller illuminates not only the Chronicles of Narnia, but the nature of reading itself."—Time

"There are two great pleasures to be found in THE MAGICIAN'S BOOK. One is being reminded of exactly how blissful it felt to be a child in the thrall of a book. The other is watching Miller find her way back to Narnia as an adult-where she discovers that a wiser reader is not necessarily a sadder one."—Christian Science Monitor

"Conversational, embracing, and casually erudite... a subtle reader's memoir, and manifesto."—Jonathan Lethem

"Amagical weave of rich soulful criticism, at once a distinctive and insightful biography of C.S. Lewis, and a memoir of the author....I couldn't put it down."—Anne Lamott, author of Grace (Eventually)

"This book is both a wonderful antechamber to Lewis's wardrobe portal and a convincing attempt to rescue Aslan from the Christian imagination and embed him where he has always belonged—the human imagination."—Tom Bissell, author of The Father of All Things

"A thorough and thoroughly engrossing look at one reader's lifetime love affair with Narnia... Smart, meticulous, and altogether delightful."—Karen Joy Fowler, author of The Jane Austin Book Club

"An agreeable and insightful book...her sometimes affectionate, sometimes analytical book will delight both skeptics and true believers."—Michael Cart, Booklist

"...Anyone who believes in the power of literature will want to savor The Magician's Book. In the end you feel as if you have had a stimulating literary conversation with a group of very smart and savvy friends."—Anita Silvey, author of 100 Best Books for Children

"A rewarding study by a first-rate arts writer."—Kirkus

"Jam-packed with critical insights and historical context, this discussion of C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia...is intellectually inspiring."—Publishers Weekly

"...Reading [Miller's] thrilling new book about C. S. Lewis and his Narnia series is like sitting down with the smartest and least tendentious person you know and dishing your favorite books. I came away from this book feeling thoroughly informed, entertained, and inspired."—James Hynes, author of The Lecturer's Tale and Kings of Infinite Space

From the Publisher

"...Reading [Miller's] thrilling new book about C. S. Lewis and his Narnia series is like sitting down with the smartest and least tendentious person you know and dishing your favorite books. I came away from this book feeling thoroughly informed, entertained, and inspired."

author of The Lecturer's Tale and Kings of Infini James Hynes

"...Anyone who believes in the power of literature will want to savor The Magician's Book. In the end you feel as if you have had a stimulating literary conversation with a group of very smart and savvy friends."

author of 100 Best Books for Children Anita Silvey

"An agreeable and insightful book...her sometimes affectionate, sometimes analytical book will delight both skeptics and true believers."

Michael Cart - Booklist

"A thorough and thoroughly engrossing look at one reader's lifetime love affair with Narnia... Smart, meticulous, and altogether delightful."

author of The Jane Austin Book Club Karen Joy Fowler

"This book is both a wonderful antechamber to Lewis's wardrobe portal and a convincing attempt to rescue Aslan from the Christian imagination and embed him where he has always belonged--the human imagination."

author of The Father of All Things Tom Bissell

"Amagical weave of rich soulful criticism, at once a distinctive and insightful biography of C.S. Lewis, and a memoir of the author....I couldn't put it down."

author of Grace (Eventually) Anne Lamott

"Conversational, embracing, and casually erudite... a subtle reader's memoir, and manifesto."

Jonathan Lethem

"There are two great pleasures to be found in THE MAGICIAN'S BOOK. One is being reminded of exactly how blissful it felt to be a child in the thrall of a book. The other is watching
Miller find her way back to Narnia as an adult-where she discovers that a wiser reader is not necessarily a sadder one."

Christian Science Monitor

"Weaving together her own life as a reader and C. S. Lewis's life as, among other things, a reader, a writer, a Christian, a veteran of World War I, and a friend to J.R.R. Tolkien,
Miller illuminates not only the Chronicles of Narnia, but the nature of reading itself."

Time

"Empathetic, rigorous,
erudite, funny, generous, and surprising....THE MAGICIAN'S BOOK abounds with a rare quality that most literary criticism lacks, the quality of hopeful longing that helped lead C. S. Lewis to imagine Narnia, the quality that he prized above almost all others: joy."

Los Angeles Times

An agreeable and insightful book...her sometimes affectionate, sometimes analytical book will delight both skeptics and true believers.
— Booklist

Michael Cart

…[a] hard-to-categorize, absorbing book. Think of it as an extended literary appreciation shot through with illuminating shafts of memoir, scholarship, biography and conversational interviews. Reading it is like sitting down for the afternoon with a fellow Narnia nut who is much more erudite than you are but genial and amusing enough never to intimidate or bore.
—The Washington Post

Elizabeth Ward

Jam-packed with critical insights and historical context, this discussion of C.S. Lewis's Chronicles of Narnia from Miller's double perspectives-as the wide-eyed child who first read the books and an agnostic adult who revisits them-is intellectually inspiring but not always cohesive. Finding her distrust of Christianity undermined by her love of Lewis's indisputably Christian-themed world, Salon.com cofounder and staff writer Miller seeks to "recapture [Narnia's] old enchantment." She replaces lost innocence with understanding, visiting Lewis's home in England, reading his letters and books (which she quotes extensively) and interviewing readers and writers. Lengthy musings on Freudian analysis of sadomasochism, J.R.R. Tolkien's Anglo-Saxon nationalism and taxonomies of genre share space with incisive and unapologetic criticism of Lewis's treatment of race, gender and class. The heart of the book is in the first-person passages where Miller recalls longing to both be and befriend Lucy Pevensie and extols Narnia's "shining wonders." Her reluctant reconciliation with Lewis's and Narnia's imperfections never quite manages to be convincing, but anyone who has endured exile from Narnia will recognize and appreciate many aspects of her journey. (Dec. 3)

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