The Magician’s Nephew

As I pulled this book off the shelf, I wondered if it would still hold up. I know it’s a classic (and it’s Clive Staples), but I hadn’t read it in several years and genuinely didn’t know what I would get. Turns out, there’s a reason it’s a classic.

It’s imaginative.

That’s why it’s so good, plain and simple. A brilliant author invites you into new worlds with the type of whimsy that you’d expect from someone reading you a bedtime story. And as an adult, this was a bedtime story I was delighted to pick up night after night.

We can talk theology and Christian allegory until we’re blue in the face, but this book if great because of its sheer enjoyment level. It’s just a fun kids book that any adult can read with a sheepish grin. And that’s exactly how I read it—smiling to myself at night, slightly embarrassed at reading a book meant for an audience less than half my age, and enjoying it nonetheless.

If you would’ve asked me why I liked this book after a first read, I would’ve talked about the magic. I would’ve described rings, and universes held in tiny pools. flying horses, and Aslan.

But this time it was the banality of it all that held me. It was the way Polly and Diggory acted exactly like young schoolchildren tend to act—with quick bursts of emotion and short memories. It was Diggory’s desperation to see his mother healed. It was the image of a cabby trying to calm down his bewildered horse.

That’s what takes this book from good to great. Anyone can write about magic. Few people can make it feel real.

Favorite Quote

Now the trouble about trying to make yourself stupider than you really are is that you very often succeed.