Customer Reviews

The Magician (Penguin Classics)

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The Magician is an early work of the still young(ish) Maugham. A compulsive attraction for a person unworthy of it stands between its protagonist and happiness: it shares a similar subject with works such as The Painted Veil, Theatre, and of course Of Human Bondage. But Maugham seems to have been still grappling with the implications of this interesting premise, and while in later works its development is psychological, here the attraction is excused as hypnotic. This makes for less analysis, but a faster-paced plot. Action begins in the artistic and occult demi-monde of 1900 Paris and takes the reader to a climax in the magician's lair in Yorkshire. Good is pitted straightforwardly against evil. Cliffhangers take place in suitably exotic settings. And though The Magician's storyline is mono-dimensional, Maugham weaves skilfully between the supernatural and the still explainable. Unlike other reviewers, or indeed the author himself as his introduction hints, I don't find his style has aged or that it was less effective in this earlier phase of his career.

I'm a sucker for Maugham, so I know I usually read his books and short stories through rose-colored glasses. I enjoyed The Magician and was taken with Oliver Haddo, but the ending left me mildly disappointed. Without giving anything important away, I have to say Maugham really falls short by weaving a corny "dawning day" metaphor into the closing scene. So overall I'll remember Haddo and even Margaret, but will promptly forget the plot.

I picked up this book because I had heard that Maugham had based his title character on Aleister Crowley, and Oliver Haddo is a well-drawn and imagined character. The plot and prose are terrific too for the first two-thirds of the novel, then a surprising event happens and it suddenly becomes melodramatic and clichéd with a B-movie ending. In retrospect, at the end of the book, it is easy to see how Maugham layered the work for the ending he wrote, but ultimately it robs the character of becoming magnificently evil and the novel of having the haunting power it could have had.