Three to See the King

Mills's best since *Restraint of Beasts*--eerie, obsessive, at once oddly funny and completely creepy, memorable. I usually like fiction with a more ordinary setting and realistic plotline, but this is sheer genius. If you love the works of Flann O'Brien or even Samuel Beckett, you're going to be delighted with Mills.

This is the first Magnus Mills book I've read, I freely confess to be ignorant of him and his past acclaim, until I read the jacket of "Three to See The King" on Christmas day as I opened it. So I started reading without any preconceptions or expectations.We are dropped into a landscape that is alien enough from our own to be 'somewhere else' entirely. Our protaganist and main characters are built up in pages, with beguiling swiftness, rather than chapters. With such clarity!Take what you will from the narrative and subsequent psycho-analysis, set that all aside for the time being. This story grips you and doesnt let go until you turn the final page.The relationships in the tale are insightful and well written, both between the narrator and Mary Petrie, and his neighbours on the plain. The Messiah symbolism seems quite obvious when we start to find out more about Michael Hawkins, but some quirks really make you reflect on your initial conclusions. Thats precisely why you should read Three to See The King.

Three To See The King is Mills' third novel and its also his strangest. While his first two novels have a definite setting and time period, Three To See The King does not. Instead the story revolves around a man living alone on a windswept plain in a house of tin. Alone until Mary Petrie arrives, that is. Through his introduction Mills explores male/female relationships and we see our unnamed narrator change his ways. As his friends begin picking up (literally, their tin houses and all) and moving away, the narrator begins to realize that he might be missing something. Indeed when he investigates the spot where his former neighbors have chosen to live, he finds them clustered together in a large community of tin houses. All following one man on his quest to accomplish the impossible.This is a story that operates on a few different levels. Like his previous works, Mills plops a character in the middle of the setting without any explanation. But his first two novels were grounded in reality - realistic settings, action and characters (for the most part). I agree with previous reviewers. When you pick this one up, suspend all perception of reality. Take it at face value and interpret from what you're given. It could be a fable, could be a religious metaphor, could be a comment on our dreams of a utopia that can never exist. Or it could just be a story about a guy who lives in a tin house in the middle of a windswept plain.

Mills' first two novels, "The Restraint of Beasts" and "All Quiet on the Orient Express", were both masterpieces of absurdist black humor firmly grounded in a rural landscape both recognizable and slightly akilter. In his latest work, Mills again sets up a decidedly odd situation, but this time in a terrain so briefly sketched that it moves beyond the bounds of the "real" world and becomes fable. Here, an unnamed narrator lives alone in a tin house in a desert, separated from his nearest neighbors (also tin house-dwelling bachelors) by several miles. He apparently once harbored dreams of living in a canyon, but now is content to live alone; listening to the wind play against his tin house and sweeping sand clear from his house. If this hermetic existence sounds vaguely biblical, what with solo mediations in the desert and all, it's probably because Mills is riffing on the Book of Genesis. This is further developed when a sharp and shrewish woman arrives on his doorstep unannounced and declares her intention to stay a while. This, quite naturally, upsets the order of things as the narrator is forced to alter his lifestyle in exchange for sex-which is about all he seems to find worthwhile in this new woman. Presumably the reader is here supposed to recognize Adam and Eve. The plot thickens when the narrator's neighbors, Simon, Philip, and Steve, visit and start to talk about a wonderful and mysterious newcomer to the area named Michael. He is apparently the bee's knees, and more and more people start showing up on the horizon, making their way to see Michael. From here, one doesn't want to give too much away, but the plot seems to serve Mills' desire to comment allegorically on the nature of religion, fanaticism, the search for faith and the meaning of life, free will, civilization, and a parcel of other concerns. The parable of the man who builds his house on a foundation of sand (i.e. no faith), only to have it crumble, appears to be the book's main touchstone, but Mills' playfulness makes the exact nature of his take on the parable somewhat ambiguous.Those who enjoyed Mills' two previous novels will certainly find much to recommend this one, however it's a bit more distilled and indirect than those, and thus perhaps less striking. It also seems to be one of those books that rely to a certain degree on the reader being fairly conversant with the contents of the Bible. In the end, one has to be impressed by how many ideas Mills' economical prose can pack into a slim novella.

I advise you not try to make too much sense of this short novel by Booker Prize-nominated Magnus Mills. Go along for the ride and take what you can from it. The unnamed narrator lives in a house made of tin on a wind-howling plain far from civilization. A woman he barely remembers (but who seems to know a lot about him) arrives at his doorstep and moves in. Her presence draws the attention of the narrator's three neighbors, each of whom lives miles away in their own solitary tin houses. These three - Steve Treacle, Philip Sibling, and Simon Painter - begin to form bonds among themselves, although the narrator cautiously remains outside their circle until they bring word of another man living "further out", Michael Hawkins, who is reported to have all the answers. Jealous, resentful, and curious, the narrator eventually succombs to the urge to visit Michael to see what all the fuss is about.Other reviewers have likened this book to a re-telling of the Adam and Eve story, but I don't see it. If anything, Mills has fashioned his plot closer to the story of Jesus and His betrayal. Even then, you won't find a close fit. At times, you'll been convinced this is a fable, but then Mills will introduce something so mundane, such as the narrator angering Mary Petrie by tracking sand into the house, that you'll allow yourself to believe that it is a more realistic story. Filled with absurd details, supernatural accomplishments, a dissection of ordinary male/female relationships, and a messianic figure surrounded by common pettiness, this novel defies easy description. Precisely because of this, I enjoyed reading it - I never knew where it was headed. Its oddity has charm, and the clear, thoughtful prose drives this book forward from first sentence to last. On its own or as a parable, this book will hold your interest.