Do You like book Three To See The King (2002)?
I first came across the author Magnus Mills when a lot of people were evangalising his novel - The Restraint of Beasts. Although I’ve still to add that title to my collection, I had the opportunity to pick up Three to See the King, so I could at least get a taste of Mills as a writer. I’m glad I did because Three to See the King is a nice little story and one that will stay wholly memorable with me for years to come.Three to See the King is a fable told in first-person perspective. It’s about a man (the narrator) who lives alone in a little tin house, on a barren, sand-covered desolate landscape. He has neighbours who also live in tin houses but each lives some miles apart, and they rarely see one another. The man’s life begins to change when a partially known woman Mary Petrie comes to live with him. His strict routine changes and he begins to settle into a life of cohabiting and companionship. At this time he also begins customising his tin house a little more, and interacting to a greater effort with his neighbours. Soon his neighbours begin evangelising about another neighbour, one that lives further out to the east - the enigmatic Michael Hawkins, a man who seems both charismatic and ambitious. As time passes the neighbours show a desire to move closer to Michael, and try to urge the unnamed narrator, and his lady-friend to do the same.I really liked this story. It’s simple in its prose but deep in its meaning. I read this as one of my titles for this year’s 24 Read-a-Thon and found it really readable. As it’s a fable it’s a little strange in parts and from the start you question the story because in many ways it defies logic - Why on earth is the man living on his own in such a desolate place? How did he get there? How does he sustain himself? The fact is none of these questions matter. What does matter are the moralistic lessons that the story teaches you; lessons that aren’t fully learned until the end, but it’s well worth sticking with the story, although you shouldn’t find that too difficult a job.I Like how Mills writes. He writes simply; to the point, with no sense of pretentious narrative. His description of setting and character is well handled, and reading Three to See the King is akin to listening to a traditional story-teller narrating a traditional story. I’m sure Mills’ award-winning Restraint of Beasts will usually be perceived as the better novel but this novel, on its own merit, is an accomplished title and should not be missed.Favourite Quote: “In the morning I overslept. When finally I awoke the first thing I heard was Simon clumping around on the roof. Mary Petrie had risen before me and stood tending the stove.‘How come you’re up so early?” I asked.‘I thought I’d make the pair of you some coffee.’‘Thanks,’ I said. ‘What’s he doing up there?’‘He’s seeing if there’s anywhere to put a flagpole.’‘I don’t want a flagpole!’‘He seems to think you do.’‘Well, I don’t!’I got up and went outside just as Simon came clambering down.Favourite Scene: The narrator’s closest neighbour Simon Painter decides to move his house and the narrator, mad at his neighbours increasing infatuation with Michael Hawkins, decides not to help Simon move but rather to take over a basket of provisions every day for Simon and the two neighbours that are helping him move. It’s a scene I realy like; not least because it’s compassionate and neighbourly.What this novel has taught me about writing: Don’t just write to entertain. Be moralistic, put in a few ‘life lessons’ and give the reader something more to take away with them
—Robert J Burdock
This book was an obvious allegory, yet I found that I was nowhere near interested enough to try and work out what the allegory might be. Religion, maybe? The hive mind of society? The prevailing importance of adhering to social hegemonic values? Who knows? Everything in it is clearly carefully designed to be a symbol for something else, or a metonym, but I just wasn't invested enough in the story to be bothered to decode them. This is a short book. Some thinly crafted characters do some random things for no real reason. There is a vague sense of events moving from A to B to C to some half-hearted resolution, somehow both anti-climactic and entirely unexpected; the entire latter half of the book seemed to be leading up to a more interesting climax, only to falter and fall flat in the very last sentence. It somehow manages to be a book that is neither plot-heavy nor a character study. The protagonist remains unnamed throughout, which is a device that can work if they are fleshed out in other means, such as having an actual personality. Other characters are always referred to by their full names, first and last, which again is an interesting technique that would have worked if they had ever been more than their names. Instead, they were just cardboard cut-outs, archetypes that moved across the plains of the book (literally, I am not just being poetic here) with no real motivation or characterisation. For all intents and purposes, this book was marketed as a philosophical comedy, but there was precious little philosophy in it, and even less comedy. The author seems to think that punctuating every tenth sentence or so with an exclamation mark turns it into a punchline, without appearing to realise that a punchline usually follows a comedic remark of sorts. There was even an instance of my least favourite grammatical entity - the double exclamation mark. There was really no going back from that point for me. It struck me as childish, and coupled with the sparse prose - usually a favourite of mine, when not littered with awry !!!!! - it meant that the book read like a high school essay from a B grade student.The two stars I'm awarding this book are given on the sole two merits I found in the text. Firstly, Mills does have a knack for dialogue, and although it was obviously very artificial and structured with little to no regard for realism, it worked well in the context of the book. I liked that the characters didn't speak like people. For a book that is clearly supposed to be self-aware (although aware of what, I don't know) the stilted dialogue worked for me. Secondly, the surrealism. I genuinely liked the idea, and honestly, if the book weren't clearly trying so hard to make A Philosophical Point, I can see that I might have been quite invested in the story of a man, his house of tin and his neighbours' obsession with the knowledgeable newcomer. That in itself is a great plot, already imbued with a lot of references to a certain doctrine. If only the text had been less blatant about its ulterior motives and let the plot do the talking, then I think I would've enjoyed it a lot more.I'm sure that there's a very deep meaning to the text if you look hard enough, but like the canyon excavators in the latter half of the book, I just gave up digging.
—Anwen Hayward
This was an enjoyable little book of just 164 pages. I enjoyed the simplicity of the writing style and the flow of the story from personal contentment to exploration, then coming to realize "There is no place like home". The characters had just enough description to show their personality. Four neighbors lived solitary lives in tin houses on the plains with miles between their houses. I especially liked Simon Painter - the "social" neighbor who had a flag, a bell and a captive balloon at his house and was thus labeled a "showoff". The story kept my interest without becoming too complex. A perfect read for a long rainy day.
—Betty Silvia
