I don't even remember much, but I remember the book itself, where I got it, and being rather young.

This movie tie-in edition pitches to its presumed prospective readers by quoting on the fly-leaf: "Finally she stood up out of the bath, her damp, warm body the paradise of sex".

OK, it's hard to write well about sex, that's a given, but this belongs on any list of howlers. I read to the bottom of the flyleaf, which ends: "She spoke. The strangest voice; as hard as glass. 'There is no Julie...'.

Went on to read the rest of the book. A good read. ( )

the book meets at least one of my criteria for a novel. It seems long enough. Having now the experience,, to place this best-seller in context I find that as it seems to discuss the difference between reality, and how people will experience reality, it is an inferior work to the "Alexandria Quartet" of Lawrence Durrell. It could be seen, and dismissed as a pallid American rival to that intriguing novel. It is well enough written for me to have finished it, and then move to see what Durrell had to offer. The film seemed confused, and its director or scenarist...a little beyond their depth. A good performance by Anthony Quinn, well seconded by Michael Caine.

The Magus took John Fowles more than two decades to complete. It was the first viable novel he began writing, but was published for the first time in 1966, and then in a revised version in 1977. The latter edition, which is by far the easiest to find these days, was the one I read.

As Fowles explains in the preface, some of the details of the story are taken from his own life: for instance, like his protagonist, Nicholas Urfe, Fowles spent some time teaching at a school on a remote Greek island. From such material, Fowles weaves a fantastic story that owes a heavy debt to Shakespeare's final play, The Tempest. The Prospero character, in this instance, is Maurice Conchis, an elderly multi-millionaire who own a house on a section of the island known as Bourani. Nicholas finds himself drawn to Conchis's character, and in the hours they spend together he learns more and more about his host's past, which includes an uncertain relationship with the Nazis. Further characters are introduced, most notably a pair of beautiful twin Englishwomen and a black man, Joe.

The story proceeds as a series of disjointed acts in which Nicholas, blessed (or cursed) with a critical mind, undermines and sidesteps the stories of the people he encounters. He increasingly suspects that he is taking part in some kind of masque or drama in which the others are all actors. It is through this device that Fowles causes the story to twist and turn, with new characters abruptly appearing (the German soldiers, for instance) or being dramatically recast (Joe, the twin girls) as Nicholas grapples with the line between fiction and reality. Nicholas's story is framed, in turn, by his affair with an Australian girl, Alison Kelly, whose directness and solidity are repeatedly placed in juxtaposition with the mind-games of the island drama.

The story itself hums along nicely enough, but there are points in the middle of the book, especially when Nicholas is drawn into permutation after permutation of different but similar mind games, that it starts to drag a little. Let me be clear: I think Fowles is the greatest English writer of his generation. His genius lies in his incisiveness, both in terms of his storytelling ability and his utter lack of moral prudery. Nonetheless, I found fault with The Magus mostly for the character of Nicholas, whose part in the game I thought became too predictable; truly turning the tables on Conchis and his actors would have been an interesting move that Fowles does not exploit. I also felt as though the flaws Nicholas judges so harshly in his character at the end of the book were merely the markings of inexperience rather than anything fundamentally bad about him. Toward the end, the novel comes dangerously close at certain moments at being morally judgmental in this respect.

Still, despite these minor flaws, The Magus is an astounding piece of fiction. Fowles clearly wrote it in a spirit of ambition that would have defeated many a lesser writer. The Magus is thus an important novel that, while it does not measure up to the true greatness of, say, The French Lieutenant's Woman, is still an enjoyable and worthwhile book to read. ( )

The Magus was the first book John Fowles started writing but not the first he published. It is the story of Nicholas Urfe, a middle-class Englishman, single, self absorbed playboy set in post war period. Nicholas decides to go to Greece to take a teaching position in an all boys school where he becomes in an ordeal that is a nightmare and where the nature of reality is questioned. There are many questions raised and reader be warned, left unanswered. The themes touch on freedom, power, knowledge and love. The novel is filled with tension that keeps you reading. A good knowledge of Greek mythology and Shakespeare’s Tempest and Othello and Jungian psychology will go a long way to adding to the enjoyment of this book. ( )