Over the weekend I finished reading “Three to See the King” by Magnus Mills.
From Publishers Weekly, found on Amazon.Com, here is the description:
For his third novel, former London bus driver Mills delivers a remarkable fable packed with amusing biblical allusions and eccentric characters. It begins in a house of tin “in the middle of a vast and deserted plain,” where the unnamed narrator lives alone. Three of his friends Simon Painter, Philip Sibling and Steve Treacle also live on the plain, also in houses of tin. The narrator’s primary activities consist of sweeping away the sand that accumulates at his doorstep and listening to the incessant wind, until the severely critical Mary Petrie arrives unannounced one day with a trunk of her belongings in tow and starts pushing his buttons. From Simon, the narrator learns of a new, mysterious “neighbor,” Michael Hawkins, in whom Simon and the others become increasingly interested. They even dismantle Simon’s house and move it closer to Michael’s, to the narrator’s annoyance. He then learns that the strangers he has been seeing in the area are helping Michael to dig a giant canyon that will hold an entire city of tin houses. This hits a nerve, as the narrator’s unrealized dream of living in a canyon has always been “quite a sensitive matter” for him. Urged on by Mary, he goes to investigate and discovers that a cult-like atmosphere has formed around Michael and his colossal project. But when Michael tells his followers that plans have changed and they won’t actually be living in houses of tin, all hell breaks loose and it is up to the narrator to save the day.
I don’t know why this appealed to me, but it did. I came across a copy on BookMooch and decided to give it a go. It’s actually quite short, clocking in at 167 pages of medium typeface. It’s probably best described these days as a novella.
Magnus Mills
It took sometime to really see the “biblical allusions”, but they certainly make more of a difference as the story goes. (Though I don’t see it as a re-telling of the Adam and Eve story as other reviewers say.) Another lesson from the book is not to judge something until you know what it is really all about. It made for interesting reading, especially with the strangeness of the world these characters live in. There were problems with this though. They continually had food, yet the neighbors were miles away from each other, they certainly couldn’t go to a “store” to get supplies. And with no jobs, how would they pay for said supplies. Mary’s presence still has me wondering. She does show up unannounced and proceeds to take over the “rule” of the narrators house. Why would he stand for such a thing? He bowed to her whims very fast, and it just doesn’t seem to match his independence given where he lives.
But even with these issues, the story still entertains for the most part. It was strange enough, well off-center enough, to make me interested. And the short duration of the story helped as well. I don’t think Mills would have been able to make this go further or longer. It would have been too metaphysical for my tastes, and probably the tastes of others.
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