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The Magus
- Narrated by: Nicholas Boulton
- Length: 26 hrs and 19 mins
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So enjoyed this book!
- By Mebythesea on 10-07-08
By: Patrick McGrath
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Beautiful Animals
- A Novel
- By: Lawrence Osborne
- Narrated by: Tim Campbell
- Length: 7 hrs and 48 mins
- Unabridged
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On a hike during a white-hot summer break on the Greek island of Hydra, Naomi and Samantha make a startling discovery: a man named Faoud, sleeping heavily, exposed to the elements, but still alive. As the two women learn more about the man, a migrant from Syria and a casualty of the crisis raging across the Aegean Sea, their own burgeoning friendship intensifies. But when their seemingly simple plan to help Faoud unravels, all must face the horrific consequences they have set in motion.
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please offer more of this author's books
- By S. Liskey on 07-20-17
By: Lawrence Osborne
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Galilee
- By: Clive Barker
- Narrated by: Paul Hecht
- Length: 23 hrs and 56 mins
- Unabridged
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The Barbarossa family’s roots are far more ancient and ethereal, but they are bound to the Gearys by a shared history of murder, insanity, and adultery. When Rachel Geary and Galilee, the seductive prince of the Barbarossa clan, fall in love, they unleash powerful enmities that could destroy both dynasties. Shorter and more conventional than some of Barker’s other work, this novel is especially rich with complex, passionate, three-dimensional characters, lush settings, and elegant language.
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An Audiophile's Dream
- By Joseph on 09-01-11
By: Clive Barker
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The Secret Keeper
- By: Kate Morton
- Narrated by: Caroline Lee
- Length: 19 hrs and 53 mins
- Unabridged
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England, 1959: Laurel Nicolson is 16 years old, dreaming alone in her childhood tree house during a family celebration at their home, Green Acres Farm. She spies a stranger coming up the long road to the farm and then observes her mother, Dorothy, speaking to him. And then she witnesses a crime.
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Kate Morton (and Caroline Lee) does it again!
- By Maria on 10-20-12
By: Kate Morton
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The Keys to the Street
- By: Ruth Rendell
- Narrated by: Simon Russell Beale
- Length: 11 hrs and 20 mins
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Mary Jago had donated her own bone marrow to save the life of someone she didn’t know. And this generous act led directly to the bitter break-up of her affair with Alistair. For him, it was as though her beauty had been plundered. But the man whose life she had saved would change Mary’s life in a way she could never have imagined.
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Mystery with humor and insight
- By Ida Hagman on 10-02-12
By: Ruth Rendell
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The Charioteer
- By: Mary Renault
- Narrated by: Joe Jameson
- Length: 14 hrs and 42 mins
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After surviving the Dunkirk retreat, Laurie Odell, a young homosexual, critically examines his unorthodox lifestyle and personal relationships, as he falls in love with a young conscientious objector and becomes involved with a circle of world-weary gay men.
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A Gay Classic!
- By Christopher on 02-05-16
By: Mary Renault
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The Golden Notebook
- By: Doris Lessing
- Narrated by: Juliet Stevenson
- Length: 27 hrs and 33 mins
- Unabridged
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Author Anna Wulf attempts to overcome writer’s block by writing a comprehensive "golden notebook" that draws together the preoccupations of her life, each of which is examined in a different notebook. Anna’s struggle to unify the various strands of her life – emotional, political, and professional – amasses into a fascinating encyclopaedia of female experience in the ‘50s.
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Transcendent narration of a masterpiece.
- By @vmarinelli on 07-03-12
By: Doris Lessing
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The Testament of Gideon Mack
- By: James Robertson
- Narrated by: Tom Cotcher
- Length: 15 hrs and 59 mins
- Unabridged
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For Gideon Mack, faithless minister, unfaithful husband, and troubled soul, the existence of God, let alone the Devil, is no more credible than that of ghosts or fairies - until the day he falls into a gorge and is rescued by someone who might just be Satan.
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Fantastic
- By Christopher on 07-06-08
By: James Robertson
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The Splendour Falls
- By: Susanna Kearsley
- Narrated by: Barbara Rosenblat
- Length: 12 hrs and 5 mins
- Unabridged
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Emily Braden has stopped believing in fairy tales and happy endings. When her fascinating but unreliable cousin Harry invites her on a holiday to explore the legendary town of Chinon, and promptly disappears - well, that's Harry for you. As Emily makes the acquaintance of Chinon and its people, she begins to uncover dark secrets beneath the charm.
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Odd story with a worse narration
- By MV on 01-18-14
By: Susanna Kearsley
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The Distant Hours
- By: Kate Morton
- Narrated by: Caroline Lee
- Length: 22 hrs and 31 mins
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Edie Burchill and her mother have never been close, but when a long lost letter arrives one Sunday afternoon with the return address of Milderhurst Castle, Kent, printed on its envelope, Edie begins to suspect that her mother’s emotional distance masks an old secret.
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Right Mood At The Right Time
- By Simone on 11-13-12
By: Kate Morton
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What listeners say about The Magus
Average customer ratingsReviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.
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- Joshua jones
- 02-26-15
Long, deep prose keeps you invested in outcome.
Phenomenal writing style mixed with great narration leaves you intertwined into a complex story about love, loss, and psychological doubts about the meaning of events. Great read with a thrilling subtlety that leaves you confounded over the importance of relationships, egotism, and self worth.
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6 people found this helpful
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- Sloane Garrett
- 10-18-18
This is now my favorite book of all time.
Very rarely does a story have you continuously revisiting the plot and events trying to dissect new meaning. This book had my mind going in a thousand different directions and then the path of the narrative found direction 1001. Great book and stellar performance by Nicholas Boulton.
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5 people found this helpful
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- Sarah Lacy
- 06-12-18
Ugh I couldn’t get into this book
I don’t know what my problem was but Nicholas was such a egocentric and self-deprecating character I could not get into the story. I’m sure it gets better but I can’t get past the beginning.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Carlo
- 01-26-18
Amazing performance ending let me down
The performance alone is worth the read. Hard to stop listening to. Ending was a little dissipating.
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2 people found this helpful
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- Tyler Silk
- 09-13-21
Great book
A great book that will keep you guessing. You may even re-read it after you are done (:
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1 person found this helpful
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- Kindle Customer
- 06-08-19
Excellent performance of a very influential book
Nicholas Boulton's performance was one of the best I've listened to yet, so so good! I'm not a huge fan of the overall story though, even though John Fowles is an amazing writer. I found the story to be painful to finish, and unrealistic, but mostly painful. Some aspects are really great, some are not so great. What is so interesting about The Magus is how influential it has been on modern literature. You can see traces of it in Stephen King's work, George RR Martin's, even Pretty Little Liars. I'm sure there are dozens and dozens more that were inspired by The Magus.
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- Elizabeth G. Lui
- 05-18-19
The Magus revisited
I had read The Magus when I was on the island of Mykonos in 1972. Yes, in those wanderlust years the magic of this book was just right for the adventure I was on. I would say now, like many things from our youth, I wonder how much of it I could truly grasp at that time. A lifetime of reading and thinking greatly expanded what I could glean from it now. As much as I enjoyed it, I found the first half much more focused than the second. The philosophy, myth, and life insights in the book are one of its strengths, but it seems to suffer from a writer who struggled to know how to end his story. It dragged in the end almost making it unlistenable, and lost its profound implications as the drama becomes more convoluted and unbelievable. But don’t let that deter you. I still enjoyed it, and reflected on the many years that passed since I too was stranded on a Greek island.
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- AmazonReviewGuy
- 05-23-20
To finish the book, or not to finish the book???
I struggled to finish this book. I found it was much too slow moving for me to stay interested in. The endless mind games irritated me.
The talented narrator was the only reason why I did eventually complete the book.
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- Guy
- 05-13-24
Outstanding. Highly recommended
Outstanding narrative, narration, and literature at its best. Any further descriptions may compromise the quality of the subject in review
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- Darwin8u
- 01-29-14
One of the best novels that I really think I hate.
What is written here must remain hidden. So now that you've scrolled down, let the game begin.
Hurry, let's unpack this quick. I felt like I've already spent far too much time being frustrated by the many curves, mysteries, deceptions in this book. I loved 'The French Lieutenant's Woman' and really, really liked 'The Collector' and there were many parts and many scenes from 'the Magus' that I really, really liked and even loved. But reading 'the Magus' reminded me of those novels one reads, and are far better read, when one is a nubile Freshman in college or a precocious HS Senior. I'm thinking of most of Tom Robbins, Chuck Palahniuk, JD Salinger, Ayn Rand, and Camus (to a certain extent). These are books that indeed can be considered literary (except for Ayn Rand), and have some form of magic buried within them that attracts the 20 y/o literary set. These are books that become fetish items. Carried, dog-earred, and flashed between the group to communicate their fealty to a group, game or club.
But looking back, they just don't seem to have the same magic or mystery for me. I should have read 'the Magus' in HS. I should have tried it all on sometime before I turned 30. It was smart, but the magic was gone, burned off, disappeared. The lights have been turned on. The big questions (for me, at this time in my life) seemed answered or perhaps just not that damn important. So, death.
Again, I love Fowles' prose, but part of this book felt like wading through azure pudding in a chemical fog. There were pages and pages where I just felt tired, exhausted, with burning eyes wondering why I kept turning the pages. Part Marquis de Sade, part 'Eyes Wide Shut', part PoMo philosophical exploration of freedom and love. Again, this ranks up there (I mean top, top tier) with the best novels that I really think I hate.
I did find a tidbit that might help those who are contemplating finishing this. In trying to explain different approaches to 'the Magus' Fowles explained to a young girl:
"But two approaches - The Magus is trying to suggest to Nicholas that reality, human existence is infinitely baffling. One gets one explanation - the CHristian, the psychological, the scientific ... but always it gets burnt off like summer mist and a new landscape-explanation appears. He suggests that the one valid reality or principle for us lies in eleutheria - freedom. Accept that man has the possibility for his actions. To be free (which means rejecting all the gods and political creeds and the rest) leaves one no choice but to act according to reason: that is, humanely to all humans."
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