The Magus

Some men will put on elaborate, expensive, likely illegal masques of questionable Jungian imagery rather than suggest their friend go to therapy.

Another nod to the neighborhood swap libraries I often visit. This one was a battered 1975 release that I picked up while heading out on my daily commute to work. Unlike a few I pick up and put in the TBR pile, I read a few pages and was hooked. I knew the author from The French Lieutenant's Woman, I had seen the film but had never read the book. The blurb of The Magus gave nothing away, not a single clue as to what it was about. To say it has been an eventful read would be an understatement.

Nicholas Urfe, a young Englishman, takes a teaching job on a Greek island, and life gets weird. So weird that I had no idea what was really happening up until the end—and even then? Does that make for an exceptional read, personally—the not knowing, the wanting to know? Yes.

Told in the first person, the character of Nicholas Urfe is not particularly likeable, but then neither are many of the characters that make up the cast in what, to me, was a book about an existential crisis Nick was having.

Even after the final sentence, I found myself wondering about all the characters in the book, what part they had played in Urfe’s crisis and what his awareness was of what he had been put through. Psychological manipulations? Illusion?

For a novel set in the 1950s, it has certainly stood the test of time for the modern reader.

Highly recommended for those who like their minds played with.

I read The Collector a few years ago, and that was the impression I had of John Fowles. It's a claustrophobic, captive horror story with an antagonist with a twisty, turny psychology. When I started reading The Magus and it opened up on this beautiful Greek island, a setting that's bright and open from sea to sea, I figured if it was going to be a completely different beast.

It's was and it wasn't. It plays out over a much grander stage and time scale, and very gradually walks you from Mediterranean wish fulfilment to a psychological horror that totally unseats your sense of reality.

I love a horror story where the characters make perfectly reasonable and smart moves but still cannot get out of dodge. I can't fault Nicholas, I'm sure I'd end up in just the same bind. His torturer plays on his sense of good manners, his vanity, his desires, and his curiosity. The layers just keep coming and coming.

An elegant, suspenseful book. I loved it and recommend it. Just don't expect to know what's really going on at any stage of the story.

“The most important questions in life can never be answered by anyone except oneself.” - John Fowles, The Magus

The Magus was the first novel John Fowles wrote, but his third to be published after The Collector (1963) and The Aristos (1964). He started writing it in the 1950s, under the original title of The Godgame. He based it partly on his experiences on the Greek island of Spetses, where he taught English for two years at the Anargyrios School. He worked on it for twelve years before its publication in 1965. Despite gaining critical and commercial success, he continued to rework it, publishing a final revision in 1977.

The story reflects the perspective of Nicholas Urfe, a young Oxford graduate and aspiring poet. After graduation, he works as a teacher at a small school, but becomes bored. He decides to leave England. While looking for another job, Nicholas takes up with Alison Kelly, an Australian girl met at a party in London. He still accepts a post teaching English at the Lord Byron School on the Greek island of Phraxos. After beginning his new post, he becomes bored and overwhelmed by the Mediterranean island. Nicholas struggles with loneliness and contemplates suicide. While wandering around the island, he stumbles upon an estate and soon meets its owner, a wealthy Greek recluse Maurice Conchis. They develop a sort of friendship. Conchis reveals that he may have collaborated with the Nazis during World War II.Nicholas is drawn into Conchis's psychological games, his paradoxical views on life, his mysterious persona, and his eccentric masques. At first, Nicholas takes these posturings of Conchis, what the novel terms the "godgame," to be a joke, but they grow more elaborate and intense. Nicholas loses his ability to determine what is real and what is artifice. Against his will and knowledge, he becomes a performer in the godgame. Nicholas realises that the re-enactments of the Nazi occupation, the absurd playlets after de Sade, and the obscene parodies of Greek myths are not about Conchis' life, but his own.​The book ends indeterminately. Fowles received many letters from readers wanting to know which of the two possible outcomes occur; but he refused to answer the question.

So, I managed to get to the end of this metafiction book. Its a strange post modern ramble. An enigma, wrapped in a riddle. If you do want to read it then helps if you have an strong off beat imagination. Think of a blend of the TV show Lost and the movie, The Game. On powerful drugs. And I didn't get it at all.

Perhaps this book is for people who are younger than me? People who are growing up and maturing. People who are wondering what the future holds and how they fit in?

But what do I know? It ranked on both lists of Modern Library 100 Best Novels, reaching number 93 on the editors' list, and 71 on the readers' list. In 2003, the novel was listed at number 67 on the BBC's survey The Big Read.

8/10: Definitely one of the best recommendations I've received (Thanks, Rob West).
Brilliant prose and excellent pacing, the book takes off fast and continues an incredible pace. The mysteries are compelling and the romance captivating. The only weak point was part of the plot. The ending relies on all readers agreeing about The LOVE, which I clearly didn't. Not a big point and the ending still works.
Definitely recommended for you, by me...