Product Description

The third book from perhaps the most original comic novelist in England 'I live in a house built entirely from tin. For a long while I was quite content here, and remained convinced I would find no better place to be. Then one day a woman arrived at my door and said, "So this is where you've been hiding."' Living in a tin shack, on a great plain, with only the wind for company: what could be better? But with Mary Petrie rapidly turning your house into a home, and the charismatic Michael Hawkins enticing your neighbours away, suddenly there are choices to be made. Should you stay? Or join the exodus?

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #21418 in Books
• Published on: 2002-05-03
• Original language: English
• Binding: Paperback
• 192 pages

Amazon.co.uk Review
Novella-like in form, Magnus Mills' Three to See the King is an uneasy read that transports the reader to a unique fictional setting where the familiar is strangely unfamiliar. Known for his Kafka-esque nightmares, Mills tells the abstract fable of an unnamed man, living in isolation in a tin house, who must choose between a solitary existence and joining the mass exodus of his neighbours. Through simple, deadpan prose, a keen eye for human nature and abrasive wit, Mills not only captures the dull emptiness of the unimagined life but comments allegorically on solitude and society, religion and civilisation, labour and capital. Mills, whose other books include Booker-shortlisted The Restraint of Beasts and All Quiet on the Orient Express, is an absorbing, disturbing writer who is refining his observations with each new book. --Nicola Perry

Review
'Mills's particularly rural comedy -- in which only locals are allowed to order the interesting biscuits in the village shop -- shares its anthropological glee with The League of Gentlemen!. Three To See The King is even stranger, sparser and more daring; as Mills steps back from fables of alienated labour to Beckettian first principles, his closed system closes in! It shouldn't be a speedy page-turner, but it is; light reading with real depth, this is philosophy for fiction-lovers.' Justine Jordan, Guardian 'Magnus Mills is a genius! an extraordinary individual with a completely unique view of the world, who makes sense of it in totally unexpected and inexplicable ways. It's rare that you finish a book feeling so richly satisfied.' Big Issue 'A spare but absorbing tale in which Mills handles weighty issues of charismatic leadership, blind faith, and the interdependence of human beings, with a light, dextrous touch.' Charlotte Mosley, Daily Mail

The Independent
"marvellous..artful..a delicious ambiguity, a parable which is both loaded and ingenious"

Customer Reviews

A simple but thought-provoking fable
"Three to see the King" is a fable about human relationships and human happiness. Is the grass greener on the other side? And if you conform to society's expectations will you feel like you belong?

This is a simple tale told in Mills' characteristic stripped back prose; it's almost like reading a children's story, except the adult complexities resonate off the page. In fact it's the things that Mills does not say that reveal so much about the characters in this little gem of a book.

The narrator himself is a simple character, happy to live in a house made of tin on a vast, red sandy plain in relative isolation and obscurity. But one day a woman arrives at his door and moves in. Initially he feels unsettled by this, but eventually he gets used to her presence and a comfortable companionship ensues.

Then his neighbour announces he's moving further afield to join a community being built by the great Michael Hawkins.But the narrator refuses to accept that Michael's way of life is any better than his own, and, in making such an admission, inadvertently offends his neighbour who is unable to believe his short-sightedness.

Within weeks everyone living within a five-mile radius of the narrator has packed up their houses and moved to Michael's village. The narrator watches a never-ending stream of people wandering across the red sandy plain, pieces of tin strapped to their backs, as they head towards nirvana down the road.

Before long curiosity gets the better of him and he too goes in search of greener pastures. . . with devastating (and hilarious) consequences.

I loved this book and sniggered all the way through it. But don't be fooled by the pared down language; there's a lot going on here. It's a wonderful allegory, part horror story, part comedy and I defy you not to read it without smiling at least once. These kinds of books are good for the soul.

Ace
I won't bury my head in the crevice of literary hyperbole that could make stories of Rosie and Jim seem like a metaphor, but ...

What a great read! I don't think i've ever read a book that had the effect on me that this did. It encapsulated Envy for me, imagined and real. The workings of the protagonists mind, and his thought processes seemed so similar to those that i have experienced, that i couldn't help but relate to the character and story.

The framework is brilliant, fantastic. I had a permenant smile on as i read this, and certain plot twists left me astounded both in simplicity and duplicity. If you were to ask me this book would come highly recommended, but i would suggest you have an afternoon free to read, because you won't want to put it down.

This is the first Magnus Mills book i have read, so i look forward to catching up with some of his previous work. Only six more sins to cover, Magnus ...

A work of briliance
This is a deceptively simple story about a guy who lives in a tin house in the middle of a vast plain of sand, and his interractions with other people. It is to a large degree the sparseness of this environment that enables Magnus Mills to concentrate on the relationships between the characters without any distractions, and hence enables the reader to better appreciate the subleties of these relationships, and the implications of events as they unfold. Don't get the impression, though, that the book is hard work - it's not, even when the action moves relatively slowly at first. A book to be treasured, and possibly a future classic.