{"id":386,"date":"2009-02-25T10:07:36","date_gmt":"2009-02-25T18:07:36","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.cslewis.org\/blog\/?p=386"},"modified":"2009-02-27T14:20:03","modified_gmt":"2009-02-27T22:20:03","slug":"the-magicians-book-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.cslewis.org\/blog\/the-magicians-book-review\/","title":{"rendered":"Book Review – The Magician\u2019s Book: A Skeptic\u2019s Adventures in Narnia"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"The<\/a><\/p>\n

BOOK REVIEW<\/strong><\/p>\n

The Magician’s Book: A Skeptic’s Adventures in Narnia<\/em> by Laura Miller<\/strong><\/p>\n

Little Brown: 320 pp., $25.99<\/p>\n

By Nan Rinella<\/p>\n

To anyone who loves C.S. Lewis and Narnia, The Magician’s Book<\/em> presents a dichotomy between delight and disbelief. The critique\/biography\/author’s memoir is mesmerizing in its perspicacity, but mystifying from a Christian perspective.<\/p>\n

Laura Miller is a literary critic who was raised a Catholic in the California desert and studied literature at the University of California at Berkeley. She is a cofounder of Salon.com and a contributor to the New York Times Book Review<\/em>. She writes, “The process of writing about a book can reveal things you’d never get from simply reading it.” I can certainly relate, because reading Miller’s book and writing this review has been a labor of love to this student of C. S. Lewis and J. R. R. Tolkien, and an extraordinary journey that led to a surprising and startling discovery.<\/p>\n

She admits that her rocky love affair with Narnia is one of enchantment, betrayal, estrangement, and reunion. For a long time after discovering the Christian overtones, Miller blocked out Narnia, but she could not help but eventually return, coming to terms with it. She claims, “What I dislike about Narnia no longer eclipses what I love about it.” But for all the countless times she has reread the books, they have never succeeded in converting her. She confesses though, that The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe<\/em> will always be the best book she’s ever read because of how it made her feel. She admits, “If any books could have persuaded me, it would have been these, yet I didn’t budge.”<\/p>\n

The title of The Magician’s Book<\/em> comes not from The Magician’s Nephew<\/em>, a tale of two children thrown into the birth of Narnia, but from the magician’s book that Lucy peeks in to find out its secrets in The Voyage of the Dawn Treader<\/em>. Miller’s literary criticism begins with the memories of the author as a child of nine who “opened the hinged cover of a book”-like Lucy opening the door to the wardrobe-and stepped through it into another world. “Narnia,” she writes, “seemed to emerge, by some miracle, out of my unspoken self.” She told the teacher who gave her The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe<\/em>, that she didn’t know that there were other people who had the kind of imagination that she did. And she wanted more, but was afraid to talk about it lest it go away.<\/p>\n

In Miller’s opinion, “the made-up-ness of Narnia has always seemed particularly glaring to certain well-read adults who never encountered the books as children.” Not this adult. But then, I’m the grownup, who at age forty, cried when Christopher Robin said good-by to Winnie the Pooh, as I read The House at Pooh Corner<\/em> to my two-year-old son.<\/p>\n

As a reader who first visited all of Aslan’s magical land at sixty, I was enthralled with Miller’s childhood recollections. Because I missed that blissful thrill of reading these adventures as an innocent, I relished experiencing it second-hand. I enjoyed her exploration of the influence that first books have on children, and was intrigued by her supposition that the books we’ve loved best are seldom the ones we esteem the most highly.<\/p>\n


\n<\/p>\n

I don’t recall reading The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe<\/em> as a girl-I was eight when it was published, and surely it would have impressed this child who lived so much in her imagination-like young Jack, and Miller herself. Although I’ve read Lewis for over thirty years and bought the Narnia boxed set when my son was ten, I can’t recollect our reading it. I do remember that when I prepared for my first C.S. Lewis Foundation conference in summer, 2004, “The Fantastic Worlds of C.S. Lewis & J.R.R. Tolkien,” I dug through the belongings my son left behind when he went away to college and found the books. I devoured them with the simple delight of a child, the deep appreciation of a grownup, and the devotion of a believer.<\/p>\n

As a Christian, the symbolism resonated immediately. Miller, however, writes that when she “discovered some of the more obvious \u2018secret’ meanings” in the books, she felt tricked, angry, and humiliated because she’d been fooled. She wrote, “Once you realize that a good story has the power to deceive you, it’s impossible to wholeheartedly embrace the ignorance that is always a part of innocence.” She was horrified to discover that the joy of her childhood and the cornerstone of her imaginative life were really just the doctrines of the Church in disguise. She was unable, like Lewis, to creep past the “watchful dragons.” Narnia and Aslan made her happy. She thought that Jesus wanted her to be miserable.<\/p>\n

“If the Chronicles had worked according to Lewis’ plans,” Miller writes, “and in the way many of his Christian admirers believe them to, I would have reassessed my attitude toward religion. I would have realized that Narnia and Aslan represented another face of Christianity, a better one than the Church had ever shown me, and that in turn would have led me back to the faith.” But to her, “Christianity worked like a black hole, sucking all the beauty and wonder out of Narnia.”<\/p>\n

Miller, however, thinks herself a better person for having read the books.<\/p>\n

She admired Lucy’s goodness in the The Voyage of the Dawn Treader, hoped she was like the young heroine, and was sure if they had inhabited the same world, they would have been the best of friends if they ever met. I wonder, would they? The name Lucy means light. Miller’s insight seems keen, but she doesn’t see.<\/p>\n

She claims that she lacks the disposition to believe and has never found a good reason to believe, while Lewis, on the other hand, ran out of reasons not to. “I will not!” she shouts in the opening pages of the book, and then proceeds to take the reader on a fascinating journey “further up and further in” to the land of Lewis.<\/p>\n

The reader travels through the seven books getting to know the characters and how the author shaped them from childhood and life experiences. Many critics have accused Lewis of misogyny. Miller explores the subject of Jack’s “girl trouble”-why he chose to write from Lucy’s point of view, and of his relationships with Janie Moore and Joy Davidman<\/p>\n

Miller dips down deep into the dark valleys of Lewis’ psyche, exposing his basest proclivities but without the compassion shown by his more sympathetic biographers. She, however, never leaves the reader down into the valleys for too long before whisking him back into the sun. It’s a gently rolling road, this journey of critique and praise-like walking along enjoying Narnia’s spring, then winter, and then spring again. Of course, one can’t explore Lewis’s world without encountering Tolkien and his world-strolling through the Shire, discovering Mordor around the bend, and coming up the hill back into the Shire. Miller is cynical and disapproving one moment and adoring and sympathetic the next, moving from criticism to compliments on a single page.<\/p>\n

Reading about Miller’s trips to Ireland and England made me want to hop the next plane and join her on her pilgrimage to Lewis’ childhood home, the Kilns, and the very paths Lewis walked, actually following in his footsteps-two “Alices in Narnialand.” But she was always searching for, and digging up, intelligence that would prove her right. I, on the other hand, would have been along just for a walk in the sunshine. Miller mentioned that the C.S. Lewis Foundation maintains The Kilns and was grateful for her tour of Lewis’ home.
\n<\/p>\n

Miller takes a charming side trip to the land of talking animals. She espouses that children are more likely than adults to fantasize about talking beasts because they don’t have the logical faculties to see that giving animals the power of speech would surely spoil everything we like about them. As a girl she adored Aslan but now sees “the theological strings and levers behind Lewis’ stagecraft; the great lion seems less a character than a creaking device.”<\/p>\n

Miller calls on other writers who have strong opinions about Lewis and Narnia. Neil Gaiman says “Lucy goes straight to your heart,” and once she is ensconced there, it’s impossible to step far enough away from her to take her in. Phillip Pullman considers Lewis’ children’s fiction “repellent” and “morally loathsome.” His children’s fantasy novels, His Dark Materials trilogy, are regarded as anti-Lewis. But he does offer Miller a suggestion for how she can reconcile her feelings about Lewis and Narnia.<\/p>\n

Miller ventures down some detours: a fascinating comparison of Lewis and Tolkien to Coleridge and Wordsworth in personality, work, and their relationships. She writes of what the romantics, Lewis and Tolkien-in the old sense of the word, adventure and journey-thought about the Modernists.<\/p>\n

Miller explores the history and philosophy of story and myth. Her sympathies and criticism interact and intertwine. She wanders in and out of Freudian psychological elements of the Chronicles. Gaiman agrees with Pullman about the sexuality inferences, especially in the “Problem with Susan.” Susanna Clarke, author of Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, however, feels those writers interpret too freely Susan’s growing away from Narnia.<\/p>\n

In one of Tolkien’s letters, he opined that it wasn’t necessary to know an author to appreciate his work. I think studying a writer’s life makes the work more meaningful. The more I read and study Lewis and Tolkien and their writings, the stronger my faith grows. The authors’ flaws and struggles only serve to inspire and encourage me.<\/p>\n

As I was winding up this review I became curious about what the mainstream reviewers had written about this first book by one of their own. So I read critiques from England and Scotland, then from New York to Chicago, St. Louis, Dallas, Los Angeles, San Francisco, Portland, and Seattle. All secular-full of praise, tributes to her bravery for taking on such a subject and the man who wrote about such “Christian legends.” There were but a few negative comments. Wasn’t it Lewis who said that we take from books what we bring to them?<\/p>\n

Two comments struck a chord with me that led me to wonder if maybe two of the reviewers might be of a different bent than the others. “My one criticism of Miller’s analysis,” wrote Mary Ann Gwinn in the Seattle Times, “is that she fails to see how the Narnia stories reflect the Christian virtues of individual courage, truth telling and self-sacrifice in the service of a larger cause.” Michael Joseph Gross wrote in the Los Angeles Times, “The heart of every believer is fed, and even sustained, by veins of unbelief. Faith is not only a gift but also a choice and always exists in tension with its opposite.” He also wrote that Miller’s book “is easily the best book ever written about Lewis.”<\/p>\n

I would disagree. In a cursory search I failed to find a single review in a Christian publication. However, I do think it a worthwhile read for Christians, especially lovers of Lewis and Tolkien.<\/p>\n

The Magician’s Book<\/em> is at once engaging, distressing, delightful, and disturbing-especially if one hasn’t been exposed to the darker elements of Lewis’ life. It is thoroughly researched, delectably readable, and beautifully written. It’s obvious that Miller has done extensive and exhaustive study, but though the spirit of Narnia has infiltrated her intellect and senses, it has yet to touch her soul.<\/p>\n

I found her protestations against Lewis’ message baffling for someone so taken with Narnia and steeped in knowledge about Lewis. Often I thought, “Me thinks she doth protest too much.” But then, Mrs. Moore lived with Lewis for three decades, and died apparently without reconciling with God. A minister’s daughter, she quit believing when her son was killed in WWI. Perhaps she felt doubly abandoned when Lewis turned from an intimate relationship with her to a personal relationship with God.<\/p>\n

Then, to quote Tolkien, the thought struck “like lightning from a clear sky”-SUSAN!<\/p>\n

Miller identified often with Lucy but seemingly avoided much mention of Susan, who Lewis said forgot about Narnia. “I think that whatever she had seen in Narnia she could (if she was the sort that wanted to) persuade herself, as she grew up, that it was “all nonsense.” Lewis wrote that in a letter to a boy in 1957. Did this not resonate with what I’d just been reading? How could Susan, who with Lucy was the first to see Aslan after his resurrection, who rode on his back clutching his mane, racing “across Narnia in spring”-how could she forget loving the great lion? Perhaps Susan will “get back to Aslan’s country in the end-in her own way,” Lewis offered in another letter. Or does Miller’s story explain what happened to Susan?<\/p>\n

Sometimes with all the Light in the world, some just won’t see.<\/p>\n

I’m a native Californian. I was a flight attendant for 20 years, and worked in in-flight communications for seven. I retired from United Airlines when I moved to Amarillo, Texas in 1991, and became a professional writer and freelance journalist.<\/p>\n

I have written for the Amarillo Globe-News, Canyon News, Amarillo Observer<\/em>, and Focus on the Family Magazine<\/em>. I was a National Journalism Center senior fellow with Human Events in Washington D.C. I am a graduate of Bible Study Fellowship and Christian Leaders, Authors & Speakers Services Seminar and Personality Training Workshop. I write and speak on writing, personalities, inspirational subjects, and C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien.<\/p>\n

As a student of C.S. L. and J.R.R. T., I consider myself a “Hobbit in Narnia,” attending various C.S. Lewis Foundation conferences and writing for their newsletter. I spoke on these adventures as the featured speaker at First Presbyterian Church’s 2004 Woman’s Gala in Amarillo.<\/p>\n

I am the quintessential late bloomer. I married at 27, gave birth at 38, and went back to college and first published at 48. I was a Washington D.C. fellow at 50, and started speaking at 55. I completed my first nonfiction book, Smart Steps for Safe Travel at 59. I’ve published in Daily Devotions for Writers<\/em>.<\/p>\n

I am a past president with Panhandle Professional Writers and former director of Frontiers in Writing, PPW’s annual writers’ conference. In November I gave an all day program at PPW called “More Than A Hobby: The Six Essential Elements of Encouragement.” My presentation was based on Diana Pavlac Glyer’s book, The Company They Keep: C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien as Writers in Community<\/em>. I have been appointed coordinator for the C.S. Lewis Foundation Southwest Regional Retreat in October 2009. The scheduled keynote speaker is Dr. Glyer. I will also oversee a one-day writers’ workshop in conjunction with the retreat.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

BOOK REVIEW The Magician’s Book: A Skeptic’s Adventures in Narnia by Laura Miller Little Brown: 320 pp., $25.99 By Nan Rinella To anyone who loves C.S. Lewis and Narnia, The Magician’s Book presents a dichotomy between delight and disbelief. The critique\/biography\/author’s memoir is mesmerizing in its perspicacity, but mystifying from a Christian perspective. Laura Miller […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":23,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[4,5],"tags":[143,642,151,148,18,153,152,154,150,149],"class_list":["post-386","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-arts-and-culture","category-books-and-film","tag-book-review","tag-cs-lewis","tag-jrr-tolkien","tag-nan-rinella","tag-narnia","tag-neil-gaiman","tag-phillip-pullman","tag-susanna-clarke","tag-the-lion-the-witch-and-the-wardrobe","tag-the-magicians-book"],"yoast_head":"\nBook Review - The Magician\u2019s Book: A Skeptic\u2019s Adventures in Narnia - Living the Legacy of C.S. 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