Customer Reviews

Millroy the Magician

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(1)
3 star:		(0)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(1)

 

 

Paul Theroux is a writer whose sentences are, to steal from protagonist Millroy, tangibilised. It would seem to be impossible to read him without a stream of images flowing through your mind: bloody eyes, detachable tongues, finger cutlets, Ezekiel bread and closely shaven heads.

This novel is a showcase of a writing that invokes as much as it provokes, and it does both exceptionally well. In addition to the brilliant use of image, olfactory and texture to construct a disjointed yet vividly real world, this book provides a thoughtful read that remains playful.

"How can people who eat such good food be so evil?"

That, I think, sums up centuries of debate over religion, the will of God and humanity itself. It's also a delightful sentence completely in tune with everything that had preceded it.

This is not a rollercoaster ride, but it is certainly shipborne voyage. At times it is rocky and at times it is soothing, and ultimately you can't help but be thrilled with where it ends up.

Milroy is a prophet for our times - hilarious, earnest, quirky and sincere. As he preaches the Gospel of Bibical eating, he invents a new way of life - one that is destined to change the world. Of course, it soon becomes apparent that this tale follows the Christ story (in explicit detail) - from the ragtag group of followers, to the shunning masses (who STILL don't get the real message), to those who only care about the miracles to the raising of the dead and, at last, sacrifice and resurrection and a new life in his teachings.

On one level, there is the story of the mystery man - the one everyone knows - who becomes the great Teacher with the all of the attending attention. He is the moral teacher, the one who breaks the rules and must decide how far to go. Like Christ, he is aware of his own impending doom and sees that his message will only be greater after his death. This is the book that most authors wish they could write but never do.

This book captures Massachusetts and both exemplifies and parodies new age dieting. It is a wonderful story with amazing twists and turns.

I agree with the others that this book should be taken to "heart" (as well as the rest of the good- for-your-body food) but the message gets distorted after that. Even for a health-nut like me, the fanatical obsession with food gets boring. There seems to be an attempt to address social issues revolving around dysfunctional families but the thinking reader is left with an uncomfortable feeling that this is just a prelude for a wolf lurking in magicians clothing. The food may be good for you but the story is tasteless!

Millroy alternates between illusion and outright miracle, and young impressionable Jilly is captivated.
The two share a mysterious bond, and little of the rest of the world makes any sense to either of them, but it will to you by the time you reach the conclusion of this brilliant and entertaining novel.

Cultism, mass marketing, the power of television, family values and modern day dietary habits are just a few of the issues that you will confront with Millroy and Jilly along your journey together.

This novel is funny, sometimes lyrical, often amazing, and always thought provoking.

Be warned! I have not eaten meat since finishing this book. No one can resist Millroys' magic.<BR

I have read nearly all of Paul Theroux's novels and travel books and I'm getting down to the last couple. If this is your first Theroux...don't go by this.

I'd started reading MILLROY THE MAGICIAN several times since it was published but just couldn't get into it. Since there are only a couple left, I had no choice but to tackle it again.

And I didn't like it. At first, I thought it was too close to THE MOSQUITO COAST with Millroy as an even-more bizarre incarnation of Allie Fox with Jilly as another teen narrator in his shadow. The jabs at religion are constant and, as it turns out, distracting. The descriptions of Millroy cooking read like they take up 100 pages. His disgust at observing how and what Americans eat takes up another 100 pages. Repititious was a word that I kept thinking over and over.

With every one of Theroux's works I could always get something out of it. An intriguing character, an exotic and authentic location, an interesting storyline.

Not with MILLROY THE MAGICIAN. Couldn't believe a word of it. Except for Theroux's contempt for American culture. And who doesn't have that?

Paul Theroux is one of the finest writers alive and the only one of his books I prefer to Milroy the Magician is My Secret History. Milroy the Magician is brilliantly written and deeply imaginative. If you are thinking of reading this book, treat yourself to a wonderful experience, get a copy now.

Perusing the clunkily-jointed, cliche-addled sentences of "Milroy..."'s reviews, one is far from surprised that Theroux's real achievment in this novel escapes mention: his genius for invention. Who but Paul Theroux could give us a sentence so gorgeous as this (as Milroy removes his tongue magically): "He held it out to me, panting from the effort and then he whimpered, his mouth a great gaping hole, his eyes blazing with ecstasy, and the thing vanished from his hand, leaving a slight ripeness of breath in the air." A gorgeous, plainly-worded, smellable sentence. That's Theroux's magic. And that's the vast, unappreciated pun of this book, which retails the regimen of a Biblically-styled health cult as a sideline, but is really another installment in Theroux's ongoing plea for appreciation. He is a woefully under-appreciated artist. Re-animating Allie Fox (from "The Mosquito Coast") and blessing him with a grander name and supernatural powers, Theroux reminds us that everything written, from ornithological surveys, to grocery lists, are thinly-veiled autobiography. Theroux is that yankee inventor (i.e. Fox); Theroux is that magician (i.e. Millroy). What was Thomas Mann's nickname, after all, but "The Magician"? Theroux, so crafty with his toolbox of earthy, hearty onomatopoets (e.g., "stomp", "clomp", "flap", or the limericky "fossick") builds a complicated object out of words, a breathing, farting, world...is that so common a miracle, considering the current surfeit of crappy prose afoot? That the ending of "Milroy the Magician" is a trifle cinematic, and pat (he's had luck with Hollywood in the past...can we blame him?)is barely a bother. If I read books for their endings, I'd simply skim all those words that come first. Like the reviewers listed. This is my review of their reviews.

I actually loved this book to the very core...the apple core.

I read it and grew hungry for better things. I read it when it was first published and still think back on it. I felt like Millroy may be on to something and still do.

I changed my diet after reading this...

and haven't eaten a fastfood hamburger since.

In the many works of fiction with Jesus-like characters, Millroy is the first I've seen to satirize some of the Messiah's more unpleasant traits. Think this way of the Son of God: a peevish, fastidious, obsessive fanatic who throws a magic trick whenever his disciples' interest begins to flag or someone disagrees with him too strongly-a bully. Instead of obsessions with faith and the father in heaven, Millroy concentrates on food and how it comes out after digestion, but the allusions to Jesus are unmistakable. Millroy laments the money-grubbers in TV-land, just as Jesus threw the money-changers out of the temple. Millroy demands absolute fealty, just as the Nazarene did. Children must give up all they have to follow him, including their families and normal eating habits. They are all poor, uneducated kids from broken and/or abusive families, so they are glad to join his cult and follow his rules. When a child strays from the course by, say, eating a hamburger on the sly, he or she is either ostracized or forced to submit to an on-the-spot stomach pumping. Millroy, like Jesus, promises everlasting life-well, almost. 200 years is close enough.

Millroy also has Jesus' persecution complex, with marketing execs and tabloid reporters and rival televangelists filling in as Pharisees. He is hounded first out of the TV business, then the restaurant business. Through these ventures, Theroux manages to parody both the health food nuts and religious zealots that Millroy embodies, and also the regular American slobs that Millroy pities and rejects. In my opinion, it's a welcome mock-up. Can we deny that America has become the "Land of the Fat"? On the other hand, is Millroy's literal Biblical cuisine any more practical than our non-fiction Bible thumpers' insistence on literal Biblical truth in such matters as geology and obstetrics?

It is enjoyable to follow the steps of this latter day passion play, because poking fun at That Story has always been taboo. Then when we reach the veiled parody of the transubstantiation, the joke is very rich indeed. Millroy delivers the gag in the sententious tones of the Redeemer, exhorting his disciples to eat his sliced up finger because "This is not meat. It is Millroy." Okay, as long as you're sure it's not meat. I've been at Seders where they say something like that: "This is not tref. It is gefilte fish."

This is what I've always relished about Theroux, the puncturing of puffed up things like the Hemmingway legend and the legend of the Happy Isles of Oceania. When he writes travel books, you can tell he's not on someone's payroll, because everything is not always wonderful. Instead of a swell little restaurant, you read about not-so-nice natives. When he writes fiction, you get the sense that he's not on anyone's ideological payroll, and that is refreshing in these politically correct times.

Millroy turns human at the end. He keeps throwing his weight around like a Messiah in order to impress his girlfriend, Jilly Farina: he calms the storm on the Sea of Galilee (only it's in a Boeing over the Pacific); he raises Lazarus from the dead...but flashy tricks are not what she wants. Healthy food, magic tricks, everlasting life (almost)...those are all very nice, but she wants something superior to a savior. She wants a lover.