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

by Laura Miller

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.

Genres: Nonfiction, Books About Books, Biography, Literary Criticism, Religion, Memoir, Literature

320 pages, Hardcover

First published November 25, 2008

About the author

Laura Miller is a journalist and critic. She is currently books and culture columnist at Slate.com. She was a cofounder of Salon.com, where she worked for 20 years, 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. Her new book is The Magician's Book:A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia.

Reviews

[Emilia P · Rating 4 out of 5]

Like Laura Miller asserts, even in her title, and sticks to very evenly throughout the book, one usually comes with a prejudiced eye to the Chronicles and to Lewis. I am not a skeptic--I am a Christian, and unlike Miller who was enamored of the books as a child, I really didn't come to them completely until I was a senior in college, after lots of spiritual twists and turns, and finally fully accepting that, well, the Church was where I found and celebrated the magic and the mystery of the world. So--with that in mind, I appreciated Miller's assertion that some people are predisposed to have faith and others are not. I believe it, but it is a little sad.
Keeping that in mind, I think she did a pretty great job trying to understand and get meaning from the Chronicles. I was especially intrigued by the work she did with her childhood experience of it, putting it in the context of other children's books and explaining how it captured the experiences of childhood without dumbing them down or making them particularly didactic and how well Lucy worked as a main character. I did not appreciate so much her argument on Lewis's xenophobia in the second section about her own doubts. Or her idea that the nature of the God and man relationship is inherently sort of sadomasochistic (I mean really? You got some issues, babe.).
As an English-y type, some of what she wrote got to my own issues with the experience of reading and how wonderful it is and how literary criticism gets way too mean about it, and some of it was really simplistic literary criticism, which made me sad. It called to the better part of my English major nature and also reminded me why I am so turned off to that stuff. All that said, it was well written and very very readable.
Her final argument is something along the lines of--isn't myth great, doesn't the way Lewis throws it all together kind of rule? Isn't it sort of transcendent? "For, as much as our minds like to analyze, to break things down into their constituent parts in order to examine and manipulate them, we also long for synthesis, the sensation that our words and our world are connected and infused with intrinsic life." Um. Yeah, honey, that's what faith ideally does, infuses things with intrinsic life, yo. Otherwise it would be boring and didactic and dry and I would not be such a huge fan! It's not such a big jump. And I can't quite understand how she gets so close to that transcendent stuff and just doesn't see it. The Last Battle is probably my favorite Narnia book because it takes all of the other stories, the whole universe, in its big, loving arms, and Miller's least fave because it acknowledges that as great as they are they are somehow imperfect. We can't be BFF, but it is ok--best of luck to you, lady. I think you might get it yet.

[Shilough · Rating 5 out of 5]

Many books written about C S Lewis are essentially gushing paeans, written by sycophantic acolytes. Written by a non-believer, The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia might be described as a secular appreciation, not only of Narnia, but of Lewis' imagination as a whole, as well as its wellsprings and tributaries. As young reader, Miller fell in love with Narnia, only to become disgusted and appalled when she grew up to learn that her beloved stories had been carefully imbued by their author with Christian meaning and symbolism. Revisiting the books, she replaces her original wide eyed wonder and lost innocence with understanding and insight into Lewis' own troubled childhood, his profound faith, deep imagination, and rediscovers Narnia's "shining wonders". I have read most of the even marginally decent books written about C S Lewis, and was surprised by how much Miller's unique insights moved me.

[Miriam · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't usually read literary criticism but this is totally fascinating. It stems from Miller's personal love of the Chronicles of Narnia and goes on to analyze them, and their place in the cannon, talk about C.S. Lewis' life, his faith, the role of Christianity in the books and in his life, as well as his relationship with Tolkien. She talks about the nature of reading, the difference between reading as a child and as an adult and in my favorite parts, the dichotomy between the little girls who loved LITTLE WOMEN (me) and those who loved The Narnia books (her, and Neil Gaiman and Jonathan Franzen and Susannah Clarke which reminded me how much I loved JONATHAN STRANGE AND MR NORELL).

[Monica Edinger · Rating 4 out of 5]

I enjoyed reading this tremendously. I'm no longer a "friend of Narnia" as such, but like Miller, sure was as a child. Perhaps not quite as fanatic (my imaginary land of choice being Wonderland), but I did reread them too and loved the Chronicles very much (and, yes, have my Puffin box set among my favorite childhood books).

Then I remember well teaching The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe for the first time as a young teacher and being shocked, shocked! at the heavy-handed Christian themes. But the ten year-olds I was teaching didn't notice anymore than I did when their age. Back then I thought they should, it floored me that anyone could miss it, but I've mellowed since then and now Miller helps to explain just why children pay no attention. Makes total sense to me now because I better understand that children read with a completely different body of experience to work off us from us grown-ups. The imagination is a wonderful thing and works differently at different points in our lives.

Miller writes beautifully and slips in all sorts of fascinating tidbits into this book. It is a blend of memoir, biography, criticism, journalism, and scholarship. I loved the way she wove in and out her own musings, quotes from interviews (especially those from Philip Pullman, Neil Gaiman and Susanna Clarke), clear descriptions of Lewis's more academic writing (especially on writing and reading), the relationship with Tolkien, interesting reports on more obscure books read and loved by Lewis, and just a lot on the act of reading.

The one frustration for me is that there are no end notes, bibliography, or references of any sort. I'm assuming that was intentional as it is very journalistic and meant to appeal, no doubt, to a general audience, but I would have liked to have seen some of the citations.

[Joel · Rating 4 out of 5]

Narnia is shrouded in darkness. The harsh King Miraz, uncle to the throne’s heir, Prince Caspian, rules the land, and has made certain any memory of “the old days” (as Caspian calls them) is stamped out. But Caspian—having heard tales of Satyrs and Fauns, Nymphs and Dwarfs, Talking Beasts and all manner of magical creatures—longs for more than the drab castle in which he lives. Risking torture and death, Caspian’s new tutor, Doctor Cornelius, sneaks the young prince to the top of the highest tower overlooking the land, and revels to him two secrets. First, the stories of old Narnia are true. Second, Cornelius himself is the proof, a living relic: He is a half-Dwarf!

As a being naturally uncomfortable in a land of Men, not to mention bigoted and cruel men, Cornelius has long searched for his kin: “Sometimes I have thought I heard a Dwarf-drum in the mountains. Sometimes at night, in the woods, I thought I had caught a glimpse of Fauns and Satyrs dancing a long way off; but when I came to the place, there was never anything there. I have often despaired; but something always happens to start me hoping again. I don’t know.”

Caspian is shaken, simultaneously thrilled and terrified by his tutor’s nature; the boy’s fantasy has been revealed as true. He has discovered the Numinous. In another of Lewis’ work, The Problem of Pain, the author explains the concept:

Those who have not met this term may be introduced to it by the following device. Suppose you were told there was a tiger in the next room: you would probably know that you were in danger and would probably feel fear. But if you were told ‘There is a ghost in the next room’, and believed it, you would feel, indeed, what is often called fear, but of a different kind. It would not be based on the knowledge of danger, for no one is primarily afraid of what a ghost may do to him, but of the mere fact that it is a ghost. It is ‘uncanny’ rather than dangerous, and the special kind of fear it excites may be called Dread. With the Uncanny one has reached the fringes of the Numinous. Now suppose that you were told simply ‘There is a mighty spirit in the room’, and believed it. Your feelings would then be even less like the mere fear of danger: but the disturbance would be profound. You would feel wonder and a certain shrinking—a sense of inadequacy to cope with such a visitant and of prostration before it—an emotion which might be expressed in Shakespeare’s words ‘Under it my genius is rebuked’. This feeling may be described as awe, and the object which excites it as the Numinous.

Laura Miller’s fine book is in large part an exploration of wonder. At nine she was lent a copy of The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe and was transported to a new land; the strength of her desire for this land would never be eclipsed, even into adulthood.

I was a little apprehensive picking The Magician’s Book up for the reason I avoid books about Narnia by Christians. I rather imagine the latter as dull catalogs of the parallel images in the Gospels and the Chronicles. I thought this book would be some experiment to try to strip Christianity from the Chronicles, or perhaps an argument against them predicated on the faith’s nasty influence on children. I was happily proven wrong.

Miller is a religious skeptic, true, and has hard things to say about the faith. But she does not set out to attack Lewis’ work as some pernicious attempt to brainwash the young and credulous. She loved the books as a girl, and while her heart was broken at thirteen years of age when she discovered the books’ Christian understanding, she remembers her experience fondly, even with yearning. Because she may not be able to look at the Chronicles now without coming face to face with Lewis’ faith, but she retains that first, unsullied experience. I sympathize with Miller. The way some people talk you’d think the Chronicles were a sort of Sunday School textbook. (A worksheet idea: Two columns, the first containing scenes and characters from Narnia, the second containing scenes and characters from the Bible. Match them up! Example: The ropes that bind Aslan are analogous to the tefillin of the Pharisees.) Narnia seemingly meant less to the young me than it did to other children, a fact I attribute to that world being explained to me much too soon. When it is established that a world like Narnia must be explained and understood by our own world, then Narnia ceases to be a world of its own. When the Chronicles became a sort of Children’s Edition of the New Testament, I lost interest. Not because I found the New Testament uninteresting, but because I had already got the New Testament and I preferred it not to be watered down by stories for children.

A man once complained of a tendency of his aunt’s. It seems she was a terrific painter, and enjoyed nothing more than landscapes. But she felt guilty in painting for the sake of painting, so at the bottom of each finished painting she would write a verse from the Bible. Her paintings, the man observed, became mere illustrations of Bible verses. Now there is no problem with Biblical illustrations, but nor is there a problem with painting for its own good. Lewis didn’t write The Chronicles of Narnia to be pedagogical. He did not set out to write an extended allegory (a point which Miller thoroughly puts to rest, explaining at length the nature and purpose of an allegory, in Lewis’ own words), nor did he write an Everyman morality story. He wrote, rather, a series of fantastical novels for children.

Miller grasps all this thoroughly. To understand the Chronicles, she argues, you must read them as a child. Children thrill at talking animals, at characters their own age doing heroic things (without anyone condescending to marvel at their feats despite their youth), at magic and adventure and all the rest. They do not thrill at parsing parallel meanings in texts, and allegory cheapens the adventure. Besides, children are under a restriction of language. To them, as Miller explains at length, Jesus was a bearded man in robes and sandals who lived in a desert country here on Earth. Aslan was a lion who lived in the woods in a different world altogether. Children’s understanding of language prevents them from a phenomenological understanding of Jesus Christ, and they cannot properly see the Jesusness in Aslan. This is why we teach children bible stories and graduate to Paul’s Epistle to the Romans later on when abstractions are a bit easier to get hold of.

I’m less convinced Miller understands why the Chronicles are, then, so very Christian. Lewis was one (a Christian), but that only goes so far. He may have known few children as an adult but having been one once himself, he’d seemed to held on to the important bits of childhood. He remembered the wonder he felt at, for example, Wagner’s Ring Cycle and George MacDonald’s Phantastes; he didn’t remember the life lessons, the morals, the instruction he got from them. He was not being sneaky, trying to trick children into learning the gospel truths. Nor was he, of course, writing for adults, who would “get it”.

To a certain extent Lewis was exhibiting the natural and acceptable desire for his readers to return to his books. He was thoroughly bookish by nature; he did not simply read, he dwelt on books, and they stayed with him. In that sense the Christianity of the Chronicles is an Easter egg, or series of eggs, to be found later. The eight-year-old may “only” enjoy an excellent fairy story. That same child may come back four or five years later and enjoy the story on a new, yet unseen level. Naturally some children will react as Laura Miller did; she was scandalized, betrayed, appalled upon her eventual discovery of the bald faith of the stories (she first read The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe at nine, first discovered its Christianity at thirteen). The egg she found, in other words, seemed to smell funny.

But on a deeper level Lewis wanted children to experience the Numinous at a young age. Miller revisits Narnia because she remembers her profound love for that imaginary place, and growing out of it. She cannot reclaim or rediscover the wonder, the joy of that place, and the series, while it has had a lasting effect on her life, is essentially relegated to childish nostalgia. She experiences wonder vicariously through her three-year-old friends, but does not feel it herself. Lewis’ tales acknowledge the adult’s difficulty finding joy again. He does not treat children’s imagination as gullibility or a lack of sophistication to be humored for a time; he treats imagination as spiritual vulnerability and openness. Incidentally this is another reason the Chronicles cannot be passed off as allegory or mere allusion. They are as profoundly theologically speculative as his space trilogy; he was clearly fascinated with the soteriological implications of other life. Narnia is not a mere fairy story; the land existed parallel to our own, and beings from each world travelled to and from the other. In the space trilogy, at least five different sentient species interact with the Creator in different ways. Close-mindedness to the possibility of other life may be seen as a form of covetousness. Lewis used the different worlds with their different beings as a way to explore the untold depths of the mystery of life with God (see also his speculations on gender at the end of Perelandra).

Thus the joy found in fairy tales is a foretaste of the joy found in the spiritual life. Children do not recognize this, nor ought they have to. To explain it away is to sap the experience of the thrill of it, the healthful fear of the unknown, of things larger than oneself, but also the love of beauty. So when Miller says something like “Narnia and Aslan wanted me to be happy. Jesus wanted me to be miserable,” you know something is amiss. That sort of sentiment is heartbreaking. Miller explains a child’s inability to quite understand the Jesusness of Aslan, bound by childish understanding, but she, looking back as an adult, still does not see past her childish understanding of Aslan and Jesus.

Some of Miller’s religious confusion, however, seems willful. A few examples:

She recalls a crisis of faith she had as a child. She heard in catechism that unbaptized babies who died would be condemned to eternity in limbo. She was upset that there weren’t hard and fast answers as to why such and such was the case, or presumed to be the case—it was too hazy; but one gets the impression she would have found a point-by-point justification of the theory to be a little too neat.

Elsewhere, she muses for some pages on Freudian interpretations of Lewis and his work, because he may or may not have been influenced by Freud, whose sway was great at that time. But because Freud was popular in Lewis’ time does not justify her Freudian evaluation of Lewis. Nor does her implication that all Christian believers may just be closet sadomasochists hold water just because Lewis struggled with that attraction.

She objects to the fact no piece of Christian art has touched her as much as the sensuousness of Lucy and Susan touching Aslan in The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, accusing the centuries of Christian iconography to be filled with little more than “mangled eroticism.”

She says of pity, “we pity those we regard as less than ourselves: animals or simpletons.” This only intensifies the insult when only a few pages later she says of Graham Greene, “[he] was a Catholic who was unfortunate enough not to lapse and this made him morose.”

Finally she cites Puddleglum’s (the Marsh-wiggle in The Silver Chair) defiance of the Green Lady as Lewis’ defense of theism. In that story the witch has almost convinced the four heroes their memory of life outside of bondage to her is a dream. Puddleglum breaks the spell, saying, “Four babies playing a game can make a play-world which licks your real world hollow.” Miller construes this as Lewis saying, “Well, maybe there isn’t much good reason to defend Christianity, but it’s a nice, warming idea” (my words).

I don’t feel compelled to answer these or other claims because, as I said, I suspect they aren’t sincere. Miller makes it clear she rejects the faith because she finds it uninteresting. And besides, Narnia is the wrong context to argue doctrine. If Miller had taken issue with Lewis’ faith in Mere Christianity or Screwtape, that would have been one thing. But the Chronicles are rather more about the mysterious depths of spiritual sensation. The same thrill children feel at a wonderful story, whether The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe or Squirrel Nutkin can be felt through communion with God. Indeed, a child’s reaction to a good fairy story is a foretaste of that deeper, more satisfying spiritual realization.

* * *

Miller’s book is much about the spirituality of Narnia and her difficulty with it. But I can only underemphasize the loveliness of the other bits. I had an epiphany while reading The Magician’s Book. I began this post in the scene from Prince Caspian wherein Caspian and Cornelius stand looking over the ramparts of the high tower, star-gazing, pursuing the thrill of a deeper reality. I was not as much affected as a child by Narnia as I was by, say, Brian Jacques’ Redwall books. But I realized, thinking of Caspian’s epiphany, that it is those same ramparts my mind’s eye sees when it watches the advance of Birnam Forest (Macbeth, Act V, Scene 5) (And for the record, I read Macbeth many years after the Chronicles). Such is the impact Lewis’ stories have had on my imagination. Miller’s search for the British inspirations for Narnia’s landscape is endearing, however elusive she realizes her goal to be.

When not dabbling in Freudianism, Miller’s treatment of the psychology of Lewis in writing the Chronicles is rewarding. He was a man trapped in a society of a sort of gentlemanly machismo. We can guess how encouraged he’d feel sharing his children’s fairy stories to his friends the Inklings when, upon J. R. R. Tolkien sharing an installment of the Lord of the Rings, Hugo Dyson exclaimed, “Not another fucking elf!” Miller finds in the character of Lucy Pevensie a rough analog of Lewis, or perhaps a projection. The little girl heroine, under no obligation to perform feats of might in battle, signifies the soft, tender side of Lewis’ spirituality. She, more than any other human character in the Chronicles, makes herself spiritually vulnerable, open to the Numinous.

“People,” Miller writes, “read criticism of works they already know well because they hope to expand their understanding, perhaps even to relive the experience through someone else. Great critics show us new dimensions of a book or a film, but they also articulate what it feels like to encounter the work, a sensation many of us can’t adequately capture on our own.” I enjoyed The Magician’s Book because it was nice to walk back through Narnia with someone else who knew the land. I suspect Miller may disagree with me on this point; she feels the books are much more personal to readers, and tells of how regardless of how enamored she was with the stories as a child, she never shared them with anyone. But this book never would have been written if she had not wanted to share her love with Narnia, no matter how conflicted that love has become. Nor would the Chronicles have ever been written. In the end, it is by Lewis speaking through Doctor Cornelius we can understand why he wrote his fair stories: “You [, Caspian] may well ask why I say [these things] at all. But I have two reasons. Firstly, because my old heart has carried these secret memories so long that it aches with them and would burst if I did not whisper them to you. But secondly, for this: that when you become King you may help us, for I know that you also, Telmarine though you are, love the Old Things.”

[Melody Schwarting · Rating 3 out of 5]

Books about books, academic or not, constitute one of my very favorite types of books. The Magician's Book was a delightful discovery during my first plundering of the local library in our area. Somehow, I hadn't heard of it before, and I am forever grateful to the librarian who stocked it.

The first non-Christian book about the Narniad that I've read, The Magician's Book details the enchantment, disenchantment, and re-enchantment of the author with these books. She was raised nominally Roman Catholic, and the discovery of Narnia's Christian elements distanced her from the stories for years. I appreciated the different aspects of Lewis's life, and Narnia itself, that Miller attended to in this book, and the helpful critiques she offers of the Lewis fandom/subculture. However, there is an undercurrent of disdain for people who believe differently than her, especially for the diehard Christian fans of Narnia and Lewis's apologetics. I've never been partial to apologetics, but I got the feeling that Miller pre-judged me as her reader because of my religious beliefs, and would also summarily judge any religious person, be they Buddhist, Muslim, or anything but Smart White Atheist. Miller's excellent critique of Lewis's racism (and critics who refuse to accept the extent of it) is wholly undercut by the whiteness of her book. She relates conversations she had with white, Western readers about Narnia, but not any readers of color, or any non-Western readers, which whitewashes The Magician's Book.

An aspect of Miller's examination I really cherished is her view of Narnia as a hodgepodge, a messy conglomeration of myths, fables, and stories. Everything fantastic seems to exist there. The classic Greco-Roman myths live beside solemn Norse myths, with chaste Arthurian chivalry and homey Father Christmas. Miller calls this Lewis's "magpie aesthetic." She contrasts this with Tolkien, whose rigidly ordered Middle Earth holds together like no other fictional world (he edited out the tomatoes in early versions of The Hobbit because they were an import to Britain). Tolkien was not an optimist lover of all good things. He had his likes, dislikes, and prejudices when it came to coherence of a fictional world, that flowed from his real-world preferences (Celtic is meh, though Welsh was okay, while Norse is where it's at, and everything after Chaucer is blah). Miller makes a strong case that this was why he disliked Narnia, more than its bold Christian elements.

The "magpie aesthetic" reminds me of a favorite childhood TV show, Arthur, which introduced me to so much classic literature and many thematic elements I'd later encounter in grown-up books. It's where I first heard the music of Carmen, where I first heard the story of the sword in the stone and thus of Arthurian legend (haha), and where I first saw the motifs of classic detective fiction. I don't know if the creators of the TV show were consciously influenced in this way by Narnia, but the hodgepodge-ness of it feels similar.

In a chapter on Tolkien, Miller mentions that worldbuilding isn't considered part of value judgments from literary critics, and the simple expansiveness of Tolkien's world cannot give it literary traction. There's a lot to say about that, and Miller said much of it. However, it got my mental gears rolling. Like Miller, I cherish Lewis's An Experiment in Criticism, in which Lewis argues that literary quality cannot be reduced to a set of standards when "bad" books persist in deeply affecting readers. Though I'm not in the field of literature any longer, I would love to see worldbuilding taken as seriously as characterization and plotting in literary studies. For example, I don't care for most of the characters in the Kingkiller Chronicles, nor do I give two figs, not even one fig, about the plot. Yet, I'm drawn to those books over and over because of the worldbuilding, because some nugget of that fantasy world draws me. Similarly, I enjoy the TV show Parks and Recreation because the world of Pawnee is (mostly) expansive, even real in my imagination. Recurring extras, the fictional history and culture of the town, the fact that the show published a travel guide to the city "written" by a character of the show, replete with demographic statistics and things that never appear on-screen, serve to build a world uncannily like our own, but sunnier and zanier. I think I just proved why worldbuilding might never be taken seriously in literary scholarship: the latest doorstopper fantasy novel and mockumentary sitcom won't be welcomed into the canon established by grumpy old British men (Lewis and Tolkien included, who evidently engineered the no-literature-published-before-1830 rule in Oxford curricula). Media studies and genre studies are only subsets of literary scholarship now, and don't have the traction of other ~serious~ areas of study.

A major failing of The Magician's Book is Miller's misunderstanding of Christianity. It's not her unbelief, but her reduction of the religion, that bothers me. She refers to the Chronicles as vehicles for Christian doctrine and apologetics. They're simply not. Sure, the death and resurrection of Aslan is a thinly veiled Passion narrative, and Eustace's conversion continues to delight evangelicals all over the world. Both of these scenes only relate to the doctrine of the Atonement. The other two doctrines central to Christianity, the Trinity and the Incarnation, are wholly absent from Narnia. Aslan mentions his father (I think?), but there is no tri-unity in the gods of Narnia. Aslan does not become a talking animal, he is always a talking animal, before the creation of Narnia. If the Narniad was really as Christian-doctrine-y as Miller argues it is, there would be seminary electives on "The Systematic Theology of C. S. Lewis in Narnia" and such things, but Lewis wasn't a theologian and the Narniad isn't dogmatic. Lewis lost whatever faith he had as a child, and his imagination wasn't formed and shaped by religion like Tolkien's was, or like mine was. That's why the Christian elements of Narnia can feel forced, especially to non-Christians, because Lewis didn't have that baked-in-the-bone Christian imagination. I'm not saying one is better than the other, but that Lewis's Christianity leans to the adult, the intellectual, while someone whose imagination grows alongside their religious beliefs will have a different cast to their imaginative landscape. I've met many evangelicals who were converted as adults, and our perceptions of biblical stories and figures have a fundamental difference. I grew up playacting the Nativity story, seeing my brother David when reading about the biblical figure, and singing about Father Abraham (who had many sons). My imaginative landscape is shaped by Christianity in a way Lewis's never could be, and evidently, Miller's never was, despite her Roman Catholic upbringing.

Perhaps Miller's and my experiences of Christianity are simply too disparate to reconcile. In the penultimate chapter, Miller writes, "Stories leave themselves open to a much wider spectrum of interpretation than theology does...This is a problem for the orthodox, but Lewis felt that certain important truths could be fully communicated only via stories." (281) Oh, honey, how differently we see the world. Miller has obviously never encountered the plurality present in theology, not just in nit-picky supra- or infra-lapsarian discussions, but in the global and historical expansiveness of the discipline. Theology, as many contemporary theologians will tell you, is a matter of words and stories and interpretation. Even Roman Catholic theologians differ among themselves, on major topics alongside minor. The sheer number of biblical scholars and Christian universities and publications should tell her that Christians enjoy spectrums of interpretation. Zondervan has a whole series on it! As an orthodox Christian (adherent to the Niceno-Constantinopolitan Creed, believer in the divine inspiration of the Scriptures), I find story and interpretation a crucial and liberating part of my faith. By "orthodox," I must charitably assume that Miller means "fundamentalist," a term she uses elsewhere. I'd love to see Sarah Clarkson wax an eloquent response to Miller's statement. As a historian, I just want to show off contrary examples to prove her wrong.

Overall, I really enjoyed The Magician's Book, including all the cognitive dissonance it raised in me. I love reading about other readers' experiences of stories, especially ones I cherish, and Miller's book made me love the haphazard, starlight-y Narniad even more. Sure, I ~disagreed~ with much of it, but I appreciated just as much, and even cherished the disagreement because I have had so much food for thought while reading it.

I highly recommend it to those who have had similar disenchanting experiences to Miller's, to adult first-time readers of Narnia who miss the nostalgia so crucial to enjoyment of children's literature, and to diehard Narnia fans who can stand to watch Pullman throw the babies Lewis and Tolkien out with their bathwater. The Magician's Book is closer to literary criticism than bibliomemoir, with a keen liveliness. While Miller and I may not see the world in the same way, we share deep connections with Narnia, particularly the same moments, and I'd like to think that we are linked by these shared connections despite our other differences.

[Beverly · Rating 2 out of 5]

I liked a lot about this appreciation and analysis of The Cronicles of Narnia, but I also hated a lot. What was most hateful was Miller's misapprehension of the Chronicles as "proseltyzing" and "evangelical". Lewis tries to present Christianity as he understands it and wants others, especially children, to understand it. Take it or leave it. Its vaue as literature takes it way beyond its foundation in faith. Miller's crisis about how you could like this book and hate Christianity is not called for. It is beside the point.

So there was a basic stupidity at the heart of this argument which led Miller into trying to appreciate Narnia through the "back door". This leads her into a lot of irrelevent English major nonsense about Freud, Tolkien and Northrop Frye (no disrespect)which is quite unecessary to appreciate the Chronicles.

On the other hand, when she wasn't overwrought and going on about sado-masochism and Lewis' powerful witches, Miller did give some sensitive and insightful readings of the books. Even though Miller seems intelligent however, I must believe, based on reading this and others,that journalists are essentially stupid.

[Laura · Rating 5 out of 5]

(Apologies in advance: this is less of a review than it is a reader's response -- more about me than it is about the book. Please feel free to move on down the road.) :-)

I may be remembering incorrectly, but I think the Narnia books were the first books I ever loved best. I didn't get the whole paperback box set at once -- it was years before I read The Horse and his Boy, for one, and I think The Magician's Nephew was on a bit of a time delay for me too -- but those & then the Anne of Green Gables series*, I still have them from when I was a kid, and I'll still reread them as a grownup. (See also: every Madeleine L'Engle kids'/YA book.)

Anyway. I grew up Methodist; as a little kid, I never noticed the religious symbolism in the Chronicles, and then as a big kid I felt like a bit of a dummy for not having noticed. ('Cause seriously, *duh*.) Some of it didn't sit quite right with me. For example, in The Last Battle, the Calormenes were OBVIOUSLY supposed to be Muslims, but their god Tash was more like the Devil than like Allah, who (I thought) was just "our" God with a different name.

Later still, I became the kind of person who thinks Kevin Smith's Dogma gets it just about exactly right. I read The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and wished that, if there is a supreme deity out there, that the FSM is it. And I felt... not exactly *angry* about the Narnia books, but vaguely bummed out. You know in "A Christmas Story", when Ralphie finishes decoding the Little Orphan Annie secret message, and it's "a crummy commercial. Son of a bitch"? Yeah, kind of like that.

This feeling was exacerbated a few months ago, when I read a lovely essay on Susan Pevensie. Before then, I'm ashamed to say, I had never really thought about what has been called "the Susan problem" -- namely, that she got kicked out of Narnia for growing up & becoming a woman. I was troubled about these books that I loved, but was no longer sure how I could share them with my nieces and nephews. (I figured that for sure I'd be putting a copy of that essay into the back of the book, into The Last Battle most likely. Figured I'd put one in the back of my copy as well.) I was looking for more material about the Susan problem -- and yes, I found the Neil Gaiman story, The Problem of Susan) -- when I came across Ms. Miller's book. One Abebooks order later, this former resident of the Columbus Metropolitan Library was mine.

WOW. This book addressed all my concerns about Narnia, plus some that I didn't know I had. Sexism? Yup. Racism (in the portrayal of the Calormenes, for one)? Yup. Sales pitch for Christianity? Yup. Still freaking awesome stories that I loved, love, and will share with the children I love? YUUUUUUUP.

Because there *is* more to the books than just thinly-veiled religious tracts. Narnia is a beautiful world, created from a patchwork of myths, legends, stories, and traditions that C.S. Lewis enjoyed; he gathered them up and synthesized them all into this place that kids (of all ages) have wanted to escape into; some have believed it was real. Many more, even if we didn't quite believe, have wished it were.

This is going to sound corny as hell, but I'm not going to say Miller "redeemed" Narnia for me -- she showed me that Narnia's redemption, however much or little it needed one, was already within me. The books, like their author, have some flaws; but who and what does not? The flaws cannot, do not, outweigh the beauty and the truth of these stories. C.S. Lewis argued that sometimes, fairy tales are the best way of saying what needs to be said. Actually, I first encountered this idea in Madeleine L'Engle Suncatcher (a book I still need to finish); L'Engle is quoted as saying that myths can be "truer" than facts, because myths transcend situations and contexts. For me, Narnia still has its truth and its beauty. Laura Miller helped bring it back.

I can't sum up all of Miller's arguments. She is a literary critic; I am not. I'll just say that this book was a lovely, enjoyable feat of analysis. (I read books all the time about people doing things I can't do -- ballet dancers, hockey players, witches & wizards, you name it. Here, the book *was* the thing I can't do. That was weird but kind of cool.) But here's one passage that really struck a chord with me.

Fairies, neither angels nor men, neither good nor evil, have no place in God's plan. That is the real source of their appeal and their threat, and the reason why fundamentalists object to witches, wizards, and other occult elements in children's books. It's not that these figures lure readers to Satanism, but that they introduce the possibility that God and Satan are not your only options. Whether or not you believe in fairies, they stand for that choice, for the third road. (276)

I guess, personally, I've edged towards that third road as I've gotten older. Especially lately, the growing bubbles of religious fundamentalism in our society have driven me there. But the third road, it's a nice place. I seem to be in good company here. And I can still love Narnia too.

* Ms. Miller argues that there are "two kinds of readers: those who liked Little Women and those who liked The Phantom Tollbooth" (234-235), because there are essentially two kinds of books -- "novels" (literal tales of everyday life) and "romances" (transformational adventure stories, sometimes with magic). It's interesting to me that Narnia and Anne Shirley's PEI were the two worlds I love(d) best as a kid, since apparently I'm both kinds of reader! And hey, why not double down: Madeleine L'Engle is both kinds of *author*.

[Laura · Rating 2 out of 5]

I’m a sucker for literary criticism. I mostly enjoyed the first two thirds of this book, though there were times that it seemed more like Eat, Pray, Love, (a book I utterly despised) than anything the Last Action Hero of Literary Criticism, Harold Bloom would have written. For those who do not know me, I found that . . . off putting.

As a founding member of Salon.com, Miller has had a rare opportunity to talk to authors who have wrestled hard with C. S. Lewis over the years. Neil Gaiman, Philip Pullman, Jonathan Franzen, and Susanna Clarke all get fawning shout outs through the book. Gaiman’s story The Problem of Susan helped me put my thumb on why, the more I thought about Narnia over the years, the less I liked it.

There are lots of little gems in this text. I have heard rumors of Lewis’s sado-masochism over the years, but this is the first that puts it squarely into his story. I never realized Lewis was Irish, which makes Tolkien’s frustration with him converting from Atheism to High Church make more sense. I was amused to learn that he “repudiated [T.S. Eliot] as ‘a very great evil.’” (224). While I don’t share her sense of betrayal when she realized that Narnia was a Christian allegory, I had a similar moment of anger when I realized just how racist and sexist the text was.

This book was at least as much about Tolkien as it was about Lewis, which made me feel like the book needed a different title (I know authors rarely title their own books, so I try not to hold it against them). Lewis and Tolkien had an intertwined literary life, at least for a while, after all, and I had not realized until I read this book just how frustrated Tolkien was at Lewis for being so darn syncretic.

Then I hit this passage:

“I finally tackled The Lord of the Rings, burning through it over the course of a summer . . . By that point, I recognized that, as much as I liked it, Tolkien’s freakishly prodigious powers of invention could not supply the book with what four years of studying English literature had led me to expect from a great novel. I relished The Lord of the Rings, and have reread it several times since then. I awaited each installment of Peter Jackson’s three-part film version with excitement and even delved into the ‘mythological’ texts collected in The Silmarillion – the province, really, of the hardcore fan, the geek. But by the time I left college I had read Tess of the D’Urbervilles, and Absalom, Absolom! And Crime and Punishment – to name just three books with related themes – and knew they sounded depths that Tolkien never touched.” (214)

And I’m left open mouthed and grumpy. Miller presents this unprovoked slam on Tolkien as self-evident and worthy of saying. She might even be right, though it is not at all evident to me that that is so. I too had four years of studying English Literature, for what it’s worth. I too have read Hardy, Faulkner, and Dostoyevsky. I mark a book’s depths by how deep it goes when I think hard about it. I have not reached the depths of any of these.

Miller does not make similar slams on the living authors whose work she evokes (who she might run into at dinner parties and perhaps professionally as a book critic). It’s like she needs to show us that she is A Serious Literary Critic by dissing a seminal text of genre fiction, but she doesn’t have the cojones to do it to someone she might need to interview some day.

That passage and similar ones (she takes the time to compare Tolkien’s characters unfavorably to Jane Eyre and his style unfavorably to Lolita, for example) really soured me on this book. It’s like she really needs to make sure I know she’s not a fellow geek and has contempt for my tribe. Good to know.

[Nikki · Rating 5 out of 5]

Book reviewer and Salon.com co-founder Laura Miller fell in love with Narnia in the second grade when her teacher handed her a copy of The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. Several years later, Laura, by then a lapsing Catholic and a junior-high student, read that C.S. Lewis's intent in writing the Chronicles of Narnia had been a recasting of Christian doctrine for children. She felt snookered and angry and did not revisit Narnia for many years. During those years, the Christian aspect of the Narnia books has come still more to the forefront, to the point that most discussion of the books seems to focus on that aspect alone; not to mention the Christian-evangelical-produced films released recently. From numerous tomes by evangelicals to the hatred professed by fantasy writer/atheist Philip Pullman, it seems that no one can any longer view the Narnia books other than through the lens of one's own belief or unbelief. Laura Miller, still a skeptic, manages to take a much more balanced look at the series in this excellent book.

A few years ago, Miller decided to revisit Narnia, wrote a column on Salon.com about it, and thereby started a fascinating conversation with other Narnia-lovers which led to the book. She combines memoir, biography, and literary criticism in the wide-ranging work. She explains that the Chronicles are not, in fact, allegory, as sloppy thinkers are fond of calling them; compares and contrasts Lewis and his friend Tolkien (who didn't think much of the Chronicles for his own reasons); references Northrop Frye and Ingmar Bergman as well as George MacDonald and Charles Williams. If you don't care for fantasy and never wished to visit Narnia, this book will not change your mind and you might as well skip it. But for anyone who has ever enjoyed the books -- whether you reread them regularly or not, whether you are a believer or a skeptic -- The Magician's Book will enrich your thinking about reading in general and The Chronicles of Narnia in particular. Highly receommended.

[Ali · Rating 5 out of 5]

Phenomenal. I have been waiting a long time for a book like this to be written (though, hilariously, after getting halfway through I checked the pub date and realized it came out in 2008—HOW, WHY did I miss it back then, and also: that makes a sad kind of sense, as I don't think something this nuanced and fair would be released today, with the state of Discourse as black-and-white as it presently is).

ANYWAY. Laura Miller investigates her childhood love for Narnia, her adolescent sense of betrayal by its Christianity, and her adult re-discovery of the books' power with the kind of dedicated and exhaustive curiosity that I only wish was the standard in literary criticism today. She doesn't pull punches when Lewis deserves them. She takes him to task in all the ways he should be taken to task. But she also goes further than that. By diving so deep into his youth, influences, insecurities, friendships, and the environment that shaped him as an adult, she illuminates why the Chronicles are the hodgepodge grab-bag of mysticism, folklore, world literature, Christian symbolism, prejudice and fleet-footed fantasy that they are. She follows the roots of just about every thread that goes into Narnia, and in her quest to identify its particular brand of magic, offers a thorough understanding of what was meaningful to Lewis and why—not divorced from his Christian sensibilities, but framed in a way that considers his religious convictions only one facet of a broader picture. She casts her net far beyond Lewis's own life and work in an effort to examine him in the context of the many literary currents and philosophical tensions that shaped him.

I especially love how Miller connects the dots between Lewis's day-job as a scholar of medieval literature and the "derivative" nature of Narnia. What made medieval art wonderful was exactly its playfulness and sense of levity with archetypes and ideas that were accepted as a given. Lewis was not as impressed as his peers were with Renaissance art, finding its Latin and neo-classical inflections unearned and even poorly applied, aspiring to a sophistication that was not always justified. I think Miller is dead on with this observation, as well as all the ways in which Lewis's love for Faerie constantly usurps his orthodoxy. Though I'd argue that the "wildness" Miller identifies in Narnia was not in conflict with Lewis's spirituality, but intrinsically part of it. Christianity was the edifice he built around that spirituality, but he frequently wandered down the Third (elfin) Road because his sense of the divine led him there. (Which explains why he was my own, and many others', gateway drug to universalism as young Christians ... long story!)

Anyway. I've rambled on long enough. Five stars! And a sixth for bothering to look into what "allegory" looked like in Lewis's beloved medieval lit (a far cry from how it is used/understood today) and why Narnia isn't that. (Lewis did write allegory early in his career: The Pilgrim's Regress. Later in his career, however, he pointedly abandoned it in favor of fairy tales, which he considered a purer strain of myth.)

[ThePrill · Rating 2 out of 5]

This lady never ‘got’ Narnia at all.

[Rebecca · Rating 2 out of 5]

I will admit that this book was a skim/partial read so I am willing to accept that my opinion is not a thorough evaluation. (Aside/run-on sentence: I picked up this title as I have a famous childrens' book in mind that badly needs a current literary analysis, particuarly as it is a award winner that is still touted and marketed as a "true" story when it, I will argue, is a hybrid of facts and the author's emotional history and that such marketing and touting is tantamount to Lying to Young Readers, which I do not condone and yes I think young readers understand the difference between whimsy and fact but can be lead astray when publishers slap the word "true" on a book jacket. No, I'm not telling you the title today. Mebbe tomorrow.) I picked up this book about Narnia hoping for a possible model of how to talk about the significance of the impressions young readers get from books and how that might have impact on their future relationships with books and ideas.

Bummer. First of all, my technical complaint: Why are there NO citations in this book? I mean c'mon, sure I'm an acamodemic and spend a whole lot of time looking at citations, advising people on how to cite sources, helping people find sources, so I think that if you are going to reference C.S. Lewis' _Surprised by Joy_ you might give us the citation to the edition you consulted, and even perhaps kindly provide reference to specific sections rather than assuming your readers know the reference. (They are called footnotes--get some.)

Sorry to be so cranky, but what really irritated me was the minimal treatments given to other reader responses to the Narnia books, as oh so briefly mentioned on page 101. (Miller, Laura. The Magician's Book: A skeptic's adventures in Narnia. New York: Little, Brown, 2008. See how easy that was?) If you are going to tell us that you wrote an essay on Salon (for the love of accurate citations, at least say Salon.com) give us the date! I've dipped into Salon occasionally, but if I'm feeling too lazy to go to the archives and look up your essay, which I now am, why didn't you add it an appendix or at least give us some semblance of an electronic address? Why, why?

So here's the heart of my cranky: you give us this teaser? "When had they found out about the Christian symbolism in Narnia, and how did they react?" (ibid. See how easy THAT was?) You only give us the responses of two correspondents. Those reader reactions and your responses to them are the best part of this whole book--why does it only last nine and a half pages?

Sigh. I'm running out of steam. I like the _concept_ of your book, after all, who loves talking about books and reading about books more than a librarian, but I just don't have the sense that you wanted to say more than that.

Laura Miller, what did you really want to say in this book? Why focus on Narnia and Lewis when what you really want to say is that you like reading? Were you trying to write an autobiographical critical literary analysis of Mr. Narnia Lewis? WTF??

Other contrarians who feel like reading about CS Lewis and his intellectual and spiritual struggles may enjoy this select bibliography compiled but not formatted by ME, mostly to show off:

Seddon, Eric. "Letters to Malcolm and the trouble with Narnia: C.S. Lewis, J.R.R. Tolkien, and their 1949 crisis." Mythlore 26.1-2 (Fall-Winter 2007): 61(21)

Glyer, Diana. The company they keep: C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien as writers in community. Kent, Ohio: Kent State University Press, c2007.

[Philip · Rating 4 out of 5]

I went into The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia a skeptic myself. The cover inset reads, "... another book's casual reference to the Chronicles' Christian themes left her (Miller) feeling betrayed and alienated from the stories she had come to know and trust...finally reclaiming Narnia for the rest of us, Miller casts the Chronicles as a profoundly literary creation..." The implication of course being that as a Christian, (a fundamentalist, evangelical Christian at that - I know, GASP! GASP! )I was part of "them" - the evil faction that commandeered Lewis's land (and even Lewis himself) for some propagandic, ulterior motive. Furthermore, Miller is cofounder of Salon.com. Every time I've visited the site it's come across as quite anti-Christian. At any rate, I went into this book wary.

I was surprised. Pleased and surprised. My margins are full. This book was not marketed to the Christian demographic, but it could have been. While there are many Christian themes, symbols and metaphors in the Chronicles, there is much, MUCH more that readers miss because of their focus on their... well... Christian-ness. Of course, if the inset was changed to, "... finally pointing out to Christians that there are many facets of Narnia that they always seem to miss, Miller has..." I would probably still be wary of reading it.

I kept a list of pages I liked versus disliked. The liked list outshot disliked 3:1. And the disliked side had some stuff that I enjoyed reading, but simply disagreed with.

The book was a good look at Narnia itself, the life of Lewis, as well as some of the literary forms and devices used and borrowed in the books. Most of all though, it was a decent critique of stories in general.

My only real problems were (problem 1) her characterizations of Lewis as a racist and misogynist. Although, it was fun to read, even if her arguments were weak and tired. Claiming that because he drew the Calamorenes from the Arabian Nights (the dark-skinned foreigners) he's a racist makes no more sense than saying that because the Narnian heroes are animals he's a card-carrying PETA member. Miller mentions other counter-arguments (like the White Witch being...um... white) and proceeds to ignore them.

(problem 2) Book Three was really dry, and dragged. Not that there weren't good nuggets in there... there were, but when you say "... I'm not sure how closely I would have read the first three paragraphs of this chapter, for example..." pg. 182 you may just want to cut two of those three out.

Either way, it was a worthwhile read. And I'll be putting up several quotes about the nature of books and readers on my favorite quotes page. : )

[Jesse · Rating 4 out of 5]

I fully expected this to be a much-needed attempt at reclaiming The Chronicles of Narnia from the Christian commentary that has essentially annexed this series as a kind of sacred text and regard it as a great theological statement (I know these types of people myself). I would have been just fine with simply that, but the title here is misleading, which, frankly, I should have expected coming from Miller. Instead of marking territory for a battle, she embarks on a pleasantly meandering, extremely graceful journey where she reflects on the books children fall in love with (particularly bookish children, as Miller and I'd expect most of us in these parts were), and the pain experienced when those stories are necessarily outgrown, before finally asking if it is at all possible to rediscover that magic as an adult.

But Miller's focus is also multifaceted, and in chapters that essentially function as stand-alone chapters, she delves into a very pragmatic examination of something I think has been greatly obscured in current Lewis studies: what part C.S. Lewis the serious and dazzlingly well-read literary critic, rather than C.S. Lewis, everyone's favorite theologian, played in the creation of Narnia. Miller doesn't sidestep the daunting task of teasing apart the strands of Lewis's varied influences, both secular and sacred, often with intriguing results. Also, from her investigation of the storied Lewis/Tolkien friendship and professional relationship emerges a much more complex portrait than usually portrayed. A very enlightening read and to also, to its great credit, a very easy read (Miller has a knack for relating more intricate literary terms and concepts in a way that the casual reader can easily grasp). Part memoir, part literary criticism, and it works much better than I expected.

"For the adult, a book may be a work of art, possibly a very great one, but for the child reader, certain books are universes."

[Andrew Schirmer · Rating 3 out of 5]

Laura Miller's The Magician's Book owes its genesis to a classic conundrum--what happens when we revisit beloved childhood books with the insight gained through adult experience? In particular, how is one to face the fact that one's beloved fantasy world is in fact an elaborate hodgepodge of myth fronting a Christian allegory? For the author, The Chronicles of Narnia were a gateway into a lifelong love of literature, not merely escapism.

Miller's style can be irritatingly conversational and the book is repetitive--at times it reads like one of Lewis's ambling walks in the Irish countryside. And as it has been nearly twenty years since I last journeyed in Narnia, I was probably not the target audience for this book, there were times when I nearly put it aside. That would have been a mistake. Rather than simply dissecting the allegory and writing an apologia for Lewis's admittedly mediocre fantasy world, Miller bites off far more than I expected, examining the craft of storytelling itself.

Miller most certainly did her research on Lewis's life, academic contributions, and friendships (the exchanges between Tolkien and Lewis concerning Anglo-Saxon were incredibly illuminating--Tolkien was still smarting over the "disaster" of the 1066 Norman conquest), but I would have enjoyed a deeper consideration of Lewis's Christianity and its bearing on Narnia.

Frankly, I'm now rather tired of Narnia...

[Sheila · Rating 5 out of 5]

"...The word "spell, as Tolkien mentions in his essay "On Fairy Stories", once meant "both a story told, and a formula of power over living men. Where does this power come from and what is it made of?"

This passage (chapter 26) most accurately summarizes the riddle Laura Miller sets out to answer for herself in The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures In Narnia.

Truthfully, I picked this book out at the library because I just couldn't resist the title. Nonfiction titled The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures...? And such beautiful illustrations on the cover!

No disappointment here. Miller takes the reader step-by-step through the initial miracle of her discovery of Narnia through a well-loved-teacher; through her feelings of betrayal at realizing the Chronicles' widely aknowledged "true intent" (telling the story of Christ), causing her to reject the story's magic; to a burning desire to analyze both emotions and return once again to Narnia with comprehensive knowledge of both the stories and the man who wrote them.

Despite the fact that I've never read the Chronicles of Narnia and will never personally experience the childhood magic of Narnia, I found the book to be amazingly universal in its dissection of the power that any good story has, to transport the reader outside themselves and make them feel connected to a larger world.

[Derek Jones · Rating 5 out of 5]

A study of C. S. Lewis' Narnia series from an intriguing perspective: that of a nonbeliever. Miller makes it clear in her prologue that she is enthusiastic about Lewis' work but remains unmoved by its Christian message. As a Christian myself, I was preparing for something that was perhaps bitter or deconstructionist, but it is neither. Like Lewis himself, Miller has a talent for presenting a complex subject in a concise and direct manner, well organized and reasoned without being dry.

Miller reveals the influences that led to Narnia, from country Irish landscapes to the British Empire's encounter with the Middle and Far East, from boarding schools to medieval cosmology, from Norse gods to Greek heroes. One of the most fascinating chapters deals with the contrast between Tolkien's purist approach to language and culture, and Lewis' more inclusive patchwork: Anglo vs. Irish, Catholic vs. Protestant, one vs. many.

She preserves the sense of wonder and mystery of her subject even while she examines its structure and origins, something which is difficult to do at all, let alone do well. I recommend this book highly to anyone who loves Narnia, and would encourage fellow Christians to read it as well. Much of what has been written about Narnia assumes that its magic is only window dressing for the Gospel message; Miller reveals its other richness.

[Kat Coffin · Rating 3 out of 5]

I wasn't sure what to make of this one. Her love for the Chronicles is clear, but there were certain moments and conclusions she drew that utterly bewildered me. Some of her critiques, such as the portrayal of the Calormenes, were quite valid, others were baffling. (Like the White Witch as a dominatrix.) She used some good sources for her research into Lewis' life (Alan Jacobs' biography of Lewis) but pairs them alongside truly terrible sources (A.N. Wilson's biography of Lewis) and she takes far too much consideration of Pullman's rants about the Narnian chronicles than are warranted. She spends a great deal of time trying to differentiate how Lewis portrayed Christianity and Christianity in itself--it never seems to occur to her that Lewis was portraying what Christianity COULD be, despite of the bad or tiresome experiences she had with it. Her understanding of Christianity is limited which unfortunately, limits her understanding of Lewis. All in all, it is worth a read if you're looking for some good Lewis critiques, but you have to take the good along with the bad.

[Mike · Rating 4 out of 5]

I found this book to both “uneven” and interesting, which has made it hard to decide on a ranking and how to review it. Since I was not familiar with the author (as least I don’t recall reading anything by her previously) I did not have any preconceptions about her style, likes, or dislikes. Nor, did I anticipate what “A Skeptic’s Adventures in Narnia” would be about, except for the obvious. Ultimately, I have decided it is very worthy of reading.

It has been a long time since I read “The Chronicles” and I have not seen any of the movies (the movies LM really does not like, BTW), but I do have positive memories of the books. I was never head-over-heels gaga about them, but they are worth a re-read and thanks to a friend I have a copy to do so with. The same friend (whose opinion I value and trust) read this book right before me and like me eventually gave it a favorable rating.

So, back to “The Magician’s Book”: Ms. Miller has a pretty straightforward writing style which, if she writes this way in her articles and reviews, makes her material accessible to the vast majority of readers. Except for a few patches, I flowed along with her narrative quite easily. Since I was unsure/unfamiliar with her brand of “literary criticism”, I kept wondering where the dense, “erudite” sections were. I guess that is the difference between academic and non-academic ‘lit. critc.’

I have also known of C.S. Lewis’s other writings and activities, but with the exception of reading his SF trilogy, knowing of his membership in The Inklings and friendship with J.R.R. Tolkien at Oxford University, and his reputation as a Christian Apologist, I knew few specifics. While it may be one woman’s opinion, this book does a pretty decent job of filling in many of those blanks about Mr. Lewis.

At the top of this review I wrote “uneven”. I guess that is a good description of my impression of this book. I read the introduction and the first chapter thinking that this was all very nice and good “background” (they were mostly about the author and her feelings about these books and Children’s Books in general) and wondering when the “analysis” was going to begin in earnest. And chapter after chapter it just kept going along in the same style.

That was good, as noted above, because the style is readable and the nuggets of “scholarship” that are put in the text have both context and human interest. Not just of the author, but of a small selection of others that she interviewed and cites throughout the book.

But I stayed puzzled about why this book would be considered “literary criticism”. (Ok, just shoot me if you think I’m extra dense or naïve, but hear me out first!) To me this book was more an autobiography of Laura Miller and a biography of Clive Staples Lewis, than any kind of critique of “The Chronicles of Narnia”. Why, because the preponderance of material in the book is about those two people, not the actual books. It wasn’t until I read the back outside cover blurb that I realized that the goal of the book wasn’t really about the actual tales, but how they affected their readers. Then, the style of the book made a bit more sense. I think that the author could have made this clearer in her introduction.

But, having accepted the goal of the book, I’m not quite ready to stop whining about the content. There are passages where Ms. Miller is just overly, and there really isn’t a better word for it, “self-indulgent”. Yes, given the autobiographical nature of the book she can’t help but write about herself, but what I refer to are pieces that I think are just embody “don’t care” material. In general they are not more than a paragraph and often only a sentence or a phrase, but they jarred my reading and made me think less of her and her editor. I suspect that I am not the only person to feel this way.

Her approach to how other people liked and understood the books had merit, but it was a pretty small, never varying group for the entire book. I think a bit more diversity in her contributors would have been better. There were a lot of people of “a certain age” but almost no really “fresh” comments (i.e., no young or adolescent readers giving their initial impressions.) Perhaps she only wanted the older, more considered opinions of those she included.

I actually think that this is a really good book even if you have never heard of or read any of Lewis’s books. There is enough good biography of three people here (Miller, Lewis, and Tolkien) and references to books (Lewis and other authors against whom he is popularly compared) to keep the average, omnivore reader interested. That’s how I would describe myself, since I regularly read both fiction and non-fiction of a wide variety.

If someone has incredibly strong and narrow religious convictions (of any persuasion) that might detract from one’s pleasure and interest. But for those who are curious or open-minded, his Christian “facets” are very interesting. Likewise his “professional” work as a English professor and writer held my attention. Ms. Miller explains with great detail and insight how and why Lewis loved literature. If nothing else, this book has made me consider getting copies of some of his literary books, if not the Christian ones.

While not as prolific like many light fiction authors, Lewis was and should be considered an influential writer. He had specific ideas about what made a tale good and able to hold one’s attention, just like his friend and contemporary, Tolkien. They each approached the task from different motivations and in different ways, but produced works that are still read and talked about (and now seen) today. Initially I was surprised by the length and depth of the Tolkien-related material in “The Magician’s Book”, but after finishing the book, it felt perfectly natural. And in writing about it, I find that while personally pleased by its inclusion, it is in balance to the other themes and details of Lewis’s life.

If you want a line-by-line analysis of “The Chronicles of Narnia”, then this book will not suffice. However, if you want a book that gives you a personal glimpse into how one person feels and felt about these books, their author, and how those feelings changed and evolved, then I think you will like this book. Just think of it as a book readers’ auto-biography about an influential author.

One last thing (added to my original version from last evening): Ms. Miller does an excellent job of writing about what influenced C. S. Lewis and allowed him to create such an enduring series. Her description of his upbringing, youth, and environment was strongly supportive of the idea that Lewis maintained his "inner child" throughout his life. In defense of this, she skillfully draws on his books, letters, and musings (as recorded by his brother). To that end she also visited Ireland and England in pursuit of further understanding. This respect for the author (versus veneration of the Christian) is at the core of the book and makes it feel very even-handed. It's just another reason to go out and get this book for yourself.

[Kirsty · Rating 5 out of 5]

I have never been a huge fan of the fantasy genre, but I could not get enough of C.S. Lewis' Chronicles of Narnia when I was a child. I remember, on a couple of occasions, finishing the last paperback in the series - a gorgeous boxed edition which my mother was given when she was a child, and passed on to me - and going right back to the beginning. I have read the series in adulthood, and found it almost as magical.

I was therefore very keen to read Laura Miller's memoir, The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia, which charts her own experiences of reading the Chronicles, both in childhood and adulthood. She writes: 'My relationship to Narnia would turn out to be as heady as any love affair, a story of enchantment, betrayal, estrangement, and reunion.' Jonathan Lethem deems Miller's book a 'superb long essay', 'conversational, embracing and casually erudite', and Karen Joy Fowler calls it 'smart, meticulous, and altogether delightful'.

The Magician's Book chronicles - pardon the pun - Miller's 'long, tumultuous relationship' with C.S. Lewis' books. Just as I did as a young teenager, Miller discovered the wealth of Christian material which suffused the books; these seem obvious to me as an older reader, but as a child, they went right over my head. Miller's experience from this point veered in a different direction to mine; I was still keen to submerge myself within the books, but the 'Christian themes left [Miller] feeling betrayed and alienated from the stories she had come to know and trust.'

As an adult, Miller - who was working as a literary critic at the time - came to the stories from a different perspective. She decided to investigate the Chronicles, alongside Lewis' life, 'to see what mysteries Narnia holds for adult eyes'. She was thankfully enraptured by the stories once more, and was able to recapture some of the childhood love which she felt for them. She muses at length upon the Christian symbolism in the novels, explaining why she initially felt let down by this element, and how cleverly Lewis drew parallels between the two. She examines, too, the role of women and race within the novels, and the lack of distinct politics in Narnia, amongst so many other elements.

I loved the mixing of Miller's own memoir alongside a quite detailed biography of C.S. Lewis himself. She visits the places in which he lived, in both England and Ireland, and travels to the specific Irish landscapes which inspired portions of the books. Miller found Lewis to be a man 'who stands in stark contrast to his whimsical creation'. In her research, she was particularly interested in his all-engulfing friendship with Lord of the Rings creator J.R.R. Tolkien, as well as the influence which he has had upon a slew of modern writers, including Neil Gaiman and Jonathan Franzen. Miller gives a fantastic commentary regarding mythology and Medieval romance, and its influences on both Lewis and Tolkien.

The Magician's Book opens with a reflection of Miller's childhood, when the greatest love which she felt was for the Narnia stories. She writes in especially touching prose here, telling us: 'I'm wishing, with every bit of myself, for two things. First, I want a place I've read about in a book to really exist, and second, I want to be able to go there. I want this so much I'm pretty sure the misery of not getting it will kill me. For the rest of my life, I will never want anything quite so much again.' Narnia showed the young Laura how she 'could tumble through a hole in the world I knew and into another, better one, a world fresher, more brightly colored, more exhilarating, more fully felt than my own.'

Miller writes beautifully throughout about Narnia and its magic. She also details how formative reading the Chronicles were, and how they provided a sort of moral and educational primer for its child readers. She says, for instance: 'To me, the best children's books gave their child characters (and by extension, myself) the chance to be taken seriously. In Narnia, the boundary between childhood and adulthood - a vast tundra of tedious years - could be elided. The Pevensies not only get to topple the White Witch, fight in battles, participate in an earthshaking mystical event, and be crowned kings and queens; they do it all without having to grow up. Yet they become more than children, too. Above all, their decisions have moral gravity. In contrast to how most children experience their role in an adult world, what the child characters in these stories do, for better or worse, really matters...'.

I found The Magician's Book fascinating. Miller offers a thorough, even intricate, work of literary criticism. I left with a renewed love for the Narnia books myself, as well as a list of a few other lists and authors to explore - something which I greatly appreciate. The Magician's Book is, overall, a fantastic melding of a variety of genres and interests, and of themes and elements found within a children's series which contains an awful lot of depth.

As Miller puts it so wonderfully herself, Narnia 'mixed up classical and Northern mythologies, canonical fairy tales and slangy modern schoolchildren, myth and satire, all with such cheerful indiscrimination.' This is a wonderful piece of literary criticism, and I can only hope that every fan of Narnia will have the chance to pick it up.

[Patty Zuiderwijk · Rating 2 out of 5]

Story: 3/5 She felt betrayed when she realised Narnia can be seen as a biblical retelling.
Characters: 3/5
Writing: 2/5 Not every subject is neatly captured in one chapter and it randomly reappears in another chapter.
Reread: Nope.

[David · Rating 3 out of 5]

Similar to the tension with which Laura Miller loves the Narnia books but vilifies certain positions the author (C.S. Lewis) takes, I intend to do the same with this review of "The Magician's Book". :-) I liked her book immensely, but at times her unchecked political correctness mistakes good for ill (much like an overactive immune system, damaging as it seeks to serve). The reader will appreciate Miller's nod to objectivity and transparency when laying down her cards in the first chapter: "I began The Magician's Book hoping to explain not only why but how it is still possible for me to love these books, despite the biases and small-mindedness they sometimes display, despite often feeling that I wouldn't have much liked the man who wrote them". And throughout her text, she expresses the wonder with which Lewis could create the literary constructs that produced such longing and desire for otherworldly intimacy within her. While Lewis would claim that such things are written on the heart, and that God uses myths to call us to himself, Miller attempts to develop a purely humanistic rational for these desires.

Miller is at her best when distilling the various types of literary forms (allegory, metaphor, etc.), and in her exploration of Lewis's literary influences (Arthurian legends, Norse mythology, Celtic folktales, the "wildness" of faery lore, etc.). She explores many story archetypes, helps the reader identify them in other (non-Narnian) contexts, and does so in way that doesn't sacrifice any meaning or enjoyment in their reading.

She deconstructs the world views of Lewis's time and of the previous eras that shaped his ideas, but never in a way that cuts Lewis any slack. Ironically, in not turning that same criteria on herself, Miller fails to qualify how her contemporary sensitivities may likewise be responsible for most of her objections to Lewis's life and works. Fortunately, there are only a few chapters where Miller, indulging in a bit of unnecessary ivory tower political correctness, tediously grasps for something in which to find offense. In chapter 6 (and a bit at the end of Chp 12), she succumbs to minor feminist trappings as she wrestles with the fact that there are (indeed) gender differences, and that they play out in Lewis behaved and wrote. But she feels obliged to judge books written 60 years ago by modern progressive ideals, even when Lewis gave so very little to argue with on the gender front. And in Chapters 11 and 13, she bashes Lewis for the "dark-skinned Calormenes" and their "garlic", but falls far short of making her case that Lewis was racist (against Turkish people, of all things). Apparently she doesn't want Lewis speaking ill of imaginary people groups, since that's a small step away from judging real people. Again, the modern mindset (in this case, a reluctance to refer to another country as enemies) conducts a lengthy and tedious hearing on the matter, then gives itself a congratulatory pat on the back.

She obviously has high respect for Pullman and Gainman (quoting them frequently, and giving them a venue to throw moral stones), but is very selective with her representation of them and their works, especially on issues that would demonize Lewis had he done likewise. For example, she takes the time to describe Gainmen's short story, "The Problem of Susan", but fails to mention small details like Aslan eats Susan and Lucy, and has sex with the White Witch (the short story is very graphic). Such double standards makes me skeptical of the remaining balance of the book that I otherwise might consider objective.

Despite the above reservations, Miller has done her homework, and has many intriguing and probably original ideas I would not have come up with on my own. You get the feeling that Narnia is the root structure into which she's grafted much of her literary adult life (writing the book was probably therapy for her), so it's unsurprising that she'd have some fresh insights along the way. For not sharing Lewis's faith, she did a good job describing what Lewis meant by "joy". In fact, the very idea of anti-Christian pro-Narnia literary analysis should be enough to intrigue many a reader. Those that know only one side of a viewpoint know very little of that side, and Miller book stands ready to broaden the discussion for everyone.

[Jon · Rating 5 out of 5]

I don't think I've ever read a book of lit crit so quickly or with so much enjoyment. A blurb on the back describes it as "conversational, embracing, and casually erudite" which is exactly right. Laura Miller talks about everything from Beowulf to Led Zeppelin, from Little House on the Prairie to Lolita, all with equally fresh insight. She makes her own prejudice perfectly clear: she is a lapsed Catholic and has no patience whatever with Christianity in any form, and she even describes Graham Greene as "a Catholic who was unfortunate enough not to lapse and this made him morose." When she discovered at the age of 13 that the Narnia books, which she loved far above all others, were "really" just thinly disguised Christian apologetics, she felt so betrayed that she didn't pick them up again for years. Nevertheless, she DID eventually go back to Narnia, and she is wonderfully even-handed in her description of the joy the Chronicles still give her. A terrific book on the unique pleasures of reading, where those pleasures come from, and how important they are. She summarizes clearly and at length the fair criticisms of Lewis that he was sexist, elitist, and prejudiced, and she does not try to explain them away. She even describes in detail I have never seen before his struggle with sado-masochism. But the vast majority of the book is spent describing the history of fairy stories and romance, and in analyzing what makes good writing, with Lewis as the prime example but with reference to many other writers. If you only read one book of lit crit in your life, this one is wide, deep, and accessible enough to be a very good choice.

[Shawn Thrasher · Rating 5 out of 5]

There is something very rewarding about reading something very well written that is about a book that you love dearly, a piece of writing that expertly, lovingly, but also objectively appreciates a book, discusses the influence of a book, explores the history of the book, and adeptly practices literary criticism upon the book (without totally ruining the book forever and ever). Miller can't possibly personally ruin Narnia because she loves the books so much; this is not her goal here. Like so many readers and writers out there, Narnia was Milller's- and my - first literary adventure, that book or books that all other books and stories are judged against, that place you so desperately wanted to be real, the literary touchstone. This book details her love for Narnia, how she fell out of love, and back into appreciation and respect for the books and the author. Along the way, she writes about Lewis's own literary influences, his friendship and falling out with Tolkien, his education and background, career and Christianity (and her own lack of faith), his ideas about myth making and storytelling. And, most importantly, she writes about Narnia: his ideas of Narnia, other authors ideas of Narnia (Neil Gaiman!), and her ideas about Narnia. This book was bliss.

[Darla Ebert · Rating 2 out of 5]

"I didn't know death and loss well enough to need the reassurance of an afterlife. For these and no doubt other reasons I was and am very different from Lewis; I've never found a good reason NOT to believe, while he was a man who ran out of reasons not to."
While I am enjoying the very insightful thoughts of the author's, and her way of getting into the minds of children, I am put off by her incessant self righteous attitude toward CS Lewis, comparing herself to him in his "deception" about his chosen religion. In some ways I think Miller's writing is a justification for narcissism and a form of putting herself up against CS Lewis, coming out on top every time. On the other hand the writing crackles with fresh ideas and unique ways of viewing the Chronicles of Narnia as well as childhood and books for children.

[Taun · Rating 1 out of 5]

I really enjoyed the author’s writing style, her clear grasp of the literary world, and open honesty about not being a Christian, a minority in the fandom of CS Lewis.

I DNFed this about a quarter of the way for several reasons. Firstly, the author references Lewis’ “Surprised by Joy” so many times I felt I’d be better off just re-reading that book instead. Secondly, I feel that one cannot truly accept/understand the writings of Lewis while also denying the Scriptures he based them on. A lot of meaning is lost in translation between the believing mind & the non-religious. Lastly, when the author drew conclusions of an erotic encounter between Lucy, Susan & Aslan, I knew I was done.

[Joe · Rating 2 out of 5]

Author's tone is "I'm normally too smart for this kind of thing, but in this instance I'm so smart that I can appreciate this mostly dumb thing in ways the dumb people can't."

[Tiff Miller · Rating 5 out of 5]

I picked this book up at random from the library, intrigued by both the cover art and the title. I hesitated, though, because I was worried that the author would dim my view of my first literary hero, C. S. Lewis.

But this woman, Laura Miller, gets it. More than anyone I have ever met. What The Lion, The Witch, and The Wardrobe did for her when she first opened its pages, it did for me too.

This book actually made me tear up in places, because I finally feel like I've met someone who understands my love for Narnia, and my ability to believe in it still, even as an adult. The Chronicles are the first books I read that truly transported me to another world. A world I have never really left. The only other person I've known who seemed to feel the same way as I do about books is Anne Shirley--a fictional character. I mean, I have a lot of friends who loooove books. And love them as much as I do. But I've never met anyone who still believes in Narnia in some small way.

I loved this part biography, part memoir, part literary criticism (a genre I've never read before). Enough that I plan to buy it, so I can read it again, because there were definitely parts that went a bit over my head, referencing greats that I don't yet know. (Seriously - there are too many books to read, and not enough time.)

One of my favorite things about it is the insight into Lewis' reading habits and his friendship with J. R.R. Tolkien. Lewis' reading habits and sentiments about reading are much like my own. While I don't know whether I would have gotten along with his blustery bachelor ways, I think I very much would have liked to sit and chat with him, cigar smoke and all. And I hate cigar smoke.

[Kathy Kattenburg · Rating 4 out of 5]

"The Magician's Book: A Skeptic's Guide to Narnia" is about a lot more than Narnia or C.S. Lewis. Laura Miller, a co-founder of and staff writer at Salon.com, broadly covers the history of fantasy in English literature. She delves into the biographies of C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien who, although close friends for much of their adult lives, were quite different in literary philosophies, in how they thought about fantasy, in what they wanted to accomplish and how they wanted to accomplish it, in work habits, in productivity (Lewis was far more prolific than Tolkien), and in their basic natures.

Miller also spoke with many contemporary writers who love and were influenced by the Narnia books, some of whom are now fantasy writers themselves (Michael Chabon and Philip Pullman, for example) and some who are not (like Jonathan Franzen). And she examines her own evolution from the child who was enthralled with fantasy and was certain Narnia was a real place she was determined to find someday, to a teenager and young adult who felt disillusioned and used when she realized that Lewis had written the Narnia series in large part as a vehicle for his Christian views, to the adult she is now: someone who through a long process of thought, analysis, and rediscovery has found a way to consolidate wonder and total belief with skepticism and a broader literary perspective and end up with a more informed and perhaps richer appreciation of Narnia as well as the fantasy genre in general.