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- A place to discuss Laura Miller's THE MAGICIAN'S BOOK, the story of one reader's long, tumultuous relationship with C.S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia.
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The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia
Join- Name:
- The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia
- Category:
- Entertainment & Arts - Books & Literature
- Description:
- A place to discuss Laura Miller's THE MAGICIAN'S BOOK, the story of one reader's long, tumultuous relationship with C.S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia.
- Privacy Type:
- Open: All content is public.
- News:
- THE MAGICIAN'S BOOK is the story of one reader's long, tumultuous relationship with C.S. Lewis' The Chronicles of Narnia. Enchanted by its 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 life-long adventure in books, art, and the imagination.
Early reviews:
“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
“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
“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)
“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
“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
Author bio:
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.
