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A review by myrtosfullybooked
The Age of Magic by Ben Okri
3.0
Something between Hilton's Lost Horizon and Hesse's Steppenwolf, The Age of Magic serves self-discovery in a hazy, magical realist backdrop of an Alpine village beside a lake. The book's atmosphere resembles a fever dream, with hints of dark foreboding, that materialises differently for each of the eight characters featured. Yet, not all of them get a clear self-rebirth moment (despite that seeming to be the main point of the book) and that didn't work for me. It was almost like the author decided to drop them halfway through, and I felt the book opened up a promise it didn't keep, or one that it got distracted from along the way.
The writing is beautiful and poetic. Featuring multiple direct and indirect references to Goethe's Faust, Okri uses that archetypal story to make a commentary on the human quest for the symbolic ideal of Arcadia, whatever this might mean for each of us. Or at least that's what I understood. The book also introduces the paradox of our need for tangible evidence for even the most elusive, mystical things, which if we obtain reduces those very things to dullness. And thus our search for meaning begins again. In a more literal interpretation, one could also read this book as an elegy to the mountains as -let's face it- they are inherently magical.
I quite enjoyed the poetic narration of the book but did not like the dialogues between characters as much; they felt forced, inorganic, and I thought they disrupted the flow of the story. Overall, I'd say read this book for the prose and atmosphere-building rather than the storyline and plot if interested.
PS: This was my first book from the Leeds Central Library as I've recently discovered the joy of borrowing books instead of overburdening my poor bookshelves. Support your local libraries folks!
WHO IS THIS FOR:
Fans of magical realism, journeys of self-discovery and re-birth, multi-character viewpoints.
FAVOURITE LINE(S) FROM THE BOOK:
"But abstractions defeat us. We need real and visible things. Even miracles must be concrete. [...] We lose our way because we can only believe in evidence. We lose our way with the very senses we use to verify."
TRIGGER WARNINGS:
None
The writing is beautiful and poetic. Featuring multiple direct and indirect references to Goethe's Faust, Okri uses that archetypal story to make a commentary on the human quest for the symbolic ideal of Arcadia, whatever this might mean for each of us. Or at least that's what I understood. The book also introduces the paradox of our need for tangible evidence for even the most elusive, mystical things, which if we obtain reduces those very things to dullness. And thus our search for meaning begins again. In a more literal interpretation, one could also read this book as an elegy to the mountains as -let's face it- they are inherently magical.
I quite enjoyed the poetic narration of the book but did not like the dialogues between characters as much; they felt forced, inorganic, and I thought they disrupted the flow of the story. Overall, I'd say read this book for the prose and atmosphere-building rather than the storyline and plot if interested.
PS: This was my first book from the Leeds Central Library as I've recently discovered the joy of borrowing books instead of overburdening my poor bookshelves. Support your local libraries folks!
WHO IS THIS FOR:
Fans of magical realism, journeys of self-discovery and re-birth, multi-character viewpoints.
FAVOURITE LINE(S) FROM THE BOOK:
"But abstractions defeat us. We need real and visible things. Even miracles must be concrete. [...] We lose our way because we can only believe in evidence. We lose our way with the very senses we use to verify."
TRIGGER WARNINGS:
None