All Is Quiet on the Orient Express

Mills creates a world of quirky characters in this novel about a man who finds himself stalled in the Lake District. He initially expects to move on but because he likes to go with the flow, circumstances cause him stall as he becomes enmeshed in the local culture. The book is about characters and a surreal society where people are forced to work together because there is nobody else to do the daily tasks and where bartering is the norm and money never seems to change hands. The old man who keeps popping up and helping the protagonist is unforgettable as are many of the other characters. Like other Mills books, the dark humor and atmosphere created around the central character is the book, rather than the story line per se. I think it was unfortunate that Mills created an expectation in some not familiar with his work that there would somehow be a journey across the Russian steps and those people are disappointed. However, those that savor the other worldliness that Mills is capable of creating will not be disappointed. This is his second best book after The Restraint of Beasts.

The book was in excellent condition. The story was a little dry and lacked any depth. On the other hand, you will find this book very entertaining if you want to read something very light and carefree.

An unnamed narrator tells us he's about to embark on a quest to visit the Orient but he must, he explains, get his scooter repaired so he waits in a sort of limbo at pastoral campsite on the edges of a small town that is lorded over by the imperious Mr. Parker, a capitalistic patriarch who is at the center of all the town's commerce. Mr. Parker has a lovely daughter who arouses our narrator's senses but merely titilates him. One mishap after another makes the narrator feel obliged to stay longer in the town even though he keeps reminding us--and himself--that he wants to break free and begin his exotic travels. His major impediment to leaving, he would have us believe, is Mr. Parker, a brutal, intimidating man who demands that the narrator do all sorts of chores and odd-jobs for him, but gradually we realize that the narrator is afraid to adventure out of his comfort zone and would rather live in the relative prison of Mr. Parker's campsite tent, with its severely limiting rules, than inch his way into the flux of the vital, real, outside world. Thus the novel's theme is the conflict between our need to branch out and challenge ourselves vs. our tendency to roll up into the fetal position and die a spiritual death in our tiny world of comfort and familiarity. This theme is further explored in Mills' subsequent novel Three to See the King.

I love the way in which Mills describes very little of the people in the book. Every image which comes to mind is our own creation. The image of the chap who wears the cardboard crown everywhere is very amusing!This story - about nothing really - grabs you the reader and sweeps you along with its treatment of mundane activities and the way in which each seemingly normal event takes on sinister undertones. reat little book. Every bit as good as The Restraint of Beasts!

Magnus Mills is a genius for creating anti-heroes we care about and love and remember so well. He did it in Restraint of Beasts and does it again in his latest effort. He brilliantly has pulled off a fable about barter and wages in a contemporary yet primitive society ruled by a mysterious partiarch. The nameless narrator sinks deeper and deeper into the patriarch's clutches while deluding himself that he is about to make a voyage. But the narrator's trip east is simply a chimera. He has more in common with the stagnant town than he wants to believe. Ultimately, it's not the plot but the style, the language, the dialogue, and the humor that is so magical and compelling. I hope Mills publishes his absurd fables once a year.