MacK's review
The Magus
by John Fowles
MacK's review
The Magus by John Fowles
MacK's review
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My students like to use the made up word, "unputdownable." I always laugh at this. I can always put down a book, I can even put down this one. The problem is, I can't seem to stop picking it up again.
We are thrown, whether we like it or not into the addled frantic mind of Nicholas Urfe, a man in the middle of a suspenseful psychological experiment. The only problem is, without telling us, Fowles turns it into a suspenseful philosophical experiment as well. We are left never fully knowing what is to come next, what is real and what is unreal. And we become so attached, so dependent upon Urfe, his reactions to the moments, his arrogant assumptions about what is true and what is false, that we become as mentally addled as he is and as incapable of leaving the invented world of the magus behind as he is.
My mother managed to put it down and leave it down. I drove on, like Urfe, deeper and deeper into the tormented abyss that is compulsion and an inability to accept freedom...more
We are thrown, whether we like it or not into the addled frantic mind of Nicholas Urfe, a man in the middle of a suspenseful psychological experiment. The only problem is, without telling us, Fowles turns it into a suspenseful philosophical experiment as well. We are left never fully knowing what is to come next, what is real and what is unreal. And we become so attached, so dependent upon Urfe, his reactions to the moments, his arrogant assumptions about what is true and what is false, that we become as mentally addled as he is and as incapable of leaving the invented world of the magus behind as he is.
My mother managed to put it down and leave it down. I drove on, like Urfe, deeper and deeper into the tormented abyss that is compulsion and an inability to accept freedom...more
