Miller's book about reading reawakened the joy that reading Narnia as a child brought me. This book is for anyone who loved Narnia as a child and was horrified to revisit them and find not only that there was a moral, but that this moral is so clunkily Muslim- and woman-phobic. Rather than juvenilely throwing them out, she thoughtfully examines the Chronicles' subtextual meaning, Lewis' intellectual and belief system and how he attempted to weave these into his work. Ultimately, the Magician's Book is about learning to read. Learning to read one way as a child, another way as an adult, and how to reconcile the two. This is also what the Chronicles are about, learning how to understand the world in a new way and return to the other world that great books open doors to. ( )

Author Laura Miller was enchanted by Narnia as a child, so much so that she desperately wanted to go there. Later, she discovered that C.S. Lewis had hidden- not very subtly at all- a Christian theme in the books, especially the first one. As a non-believer, this ruined the books for her. But many years later, thinking that the book that first grabs us in that obsessive way must shape the reader in some way, Miller revisits Narnia to see what she thinks of the books as an adult, and how the books came to be written.

Miller divides her book into three sections. In the first, she talks about all she loved about Narnia. In the second, she goes into why discovering the Christian messages alienated her, and what else is bad in them- the elitism, the racism. In the third, she gives a short biography of Lewis’s life, so that we can see where his views and ideas came from.

C.S. Lewis was not someone you’d expect to write tales of talking beavers who live in beaver lodges but own sewing machines. His mother died when he was quite young, and he and his father did not get along at all. Long walks in the Irish countryside – with his brother if possible- kept him sane. He was educated at Oxford. He was a staunch Christian, socially conservative and was classist, somewhat racist, and was into sadomasochism. Not traits one normally associates people who write books for children, books that feature heroic lions and educated satyrs. But Lewis had two lives, so to speak, at the same time- the physical life he led with his argumentative father and the imaginative life he lived with his brother and in his mind. Enthralled with Norse and classical mythology, the sagas he made up were what he considered his “real life”. The Narnia chronicles are made up of bits and bobs of many mythologies, in contrast to Middle Earth, the world his good friend Tolkien built. He did not care to build a world from the ground up, complete with history and languages; the built a world from existing things that delighted him or fit the need in the stories.

The book is hard to classify; it’s part literary criticism, part biography of Lewis, part personal reaction of the author. Even though I’ve not read the Narnia books, I found it very interesting just from the viewpoint of how they came to be written, and written as they are, flaws and all.

The structure of this book expertly mimics Laura Miller's own experience with CS Lewis's Narnia Chronicles. In addition to her own textual readings, Miller discusses the framework of ideas behind both Lewis's and JRR Tolkein's major works; in essence, their worldviews and varying emphases on the Middle Ages, literature at large, and even their adherence to their pedigrees and national identities inform their works and their stormy friendship in subtle and not-so-subtle ways. I knew essentially nothing about CS Lewis's life before I started, but Miller uses his biography to expand on all aspects of his writing, along with the basic tenets of reader response literary theory (what a reader brings to a text is very important and cannot be discounted). This is a wonderful book. ( )

I picked this up on a whim, not expecting much since I hadn't been a big fan of the Narnia books as a kid, but this has convinced me that I need to go back and re-read them. Laura Miller does an amazing job of weaving the biography of C.S. Lewis, his writings, the culture he lived in, and the writings of his friends (especially Tolkien) into a compelling narrative about the Chronicles of Narnia. She simultaneously chronicles her own evolving relationship with the books, and incorporates interviews with other modern authors who were childhood fans of Narnia.

Overall, this book is a wonderful read and I'd highly recommend it to anyone, regardless of how you feel about the Narnia books. ( )

Part biography, part memoir, part literary criticism, The Magician's Book dissects the Chronicles of Narnia series from all angles. The book is interesting both for the history and insight it provides, as well as the author's commentary on how she integrated a blatantly Christian book with her own agnosticism. The best part was how the author evoked that sense of wonder and complete immersion in a story that is the beginning of every reader's childhood love of book. ( )