Ana V.

4.5 stars.

How I loved this book! For me, it was one of those works that out of the 700 pages the edition I borrowed from a friend of mine, 600 hundred I loved and 100 I was like: "oh God, please pass quickly, c'mon, c'mon, c'mon!".

Before anything else, I'd wish to say that lately, I haven't been reading books in Romanian that much because I find it's better to read the book in it's original language - that happens to be English a lot of times so it's perfect because I also get to practice it. But because I can't find all the books in their language, I'm sometimes stuck with them in Romanian. And I always complain about how badly they are translated. This one was an exception. I felt like it was originally written in my language - that's how good the translators were. It was just perfect!

How I got to get this book? At my friend's house, I was, as usually looking through her library when I saw this big, fat, fluffy book with a big title, "The Magus" (though in Romanian it's different), by John Fowles. Evidently, my eyes sparkled as they do at anything longer than 500 pages that seems serious enough for me to read, as I love long stories; the longer they are, if it's well written, the better for me. And my friend, Ana, told me that "oh yeah, I didn't read that, but it's my mother's favorite!" And I thought "hmm.. Long book, seems to be serious, and it's her mother's favorite".

Yep, I wanted it.

So I started it and it seemed nice and all that but I wasn't really into it up until 200, maybe 250 pages, when it became an addiction. And then I didn't have time to read anymore and I felt like it was getting boring again, but when I took it again three days ago I was baffled to see that no, it wasn't getting worse, it was actually improving!

The characters. I really liked all of them. This rarely happens for me, to like every character and to feel that they are there with a purpose and that if one wouldn't exist, everything would be dull.

I did read reviews about this book of people that didn't like it, as I always do with every book, to see different people's opinions and understand why they think certain things. And even though I usually understand why a man wouldn't like a book, this time I didn't get it for some of them. How could this book be too shallow? Or too simply written? It's everything but shallow, in my opinion, it gives so many good explanations and treats so many important problems! How can it be uneventful or boring or too simple? It has so many episodes and everything changes constantly!

Well, anyway, I respect other people's opinions, even though I can't explain them to myself.

I wish I'd met John Fowles. I'd love to shake his hand and tell him how nice this work was!