re:mote voices

Title: Three To See The King
Author: Magnus Mills
Publisher:Flamingo

for me three to see the king is about a variety of things, though in the main it is perhaps about people understanding what they want - examining the idea of what people think will make them happy versus what that actually means.

the un-named narrator has been living in a tin house on a red plain for some time now. he is happy, he relishes in the experience of living in a house like this, in isolation like this. sure there are other tin houses just like his across the red plain, but the other people are far enough away that he doesn't have to have anything to do with them unless he wants to. but then a couple of things happen to challenge his life style - is he really happy, would he happier following another option?

one day a woman arrives at his door. he has met mary petrie once or twice, spoken to her some, but he wouldn't have called them close in anyway. yet here she is, at his front door and ready to move in. of course this is no life for a woman like mary, and each day brings new changes to make the house more of a home. spinning his head around in the process.

at about the same time his nearest neighbours start to become involved with another neighbour he hasn't met before. so that before he knows it his neighbours are no longer there, they've gone to be nearer michael. and again with each day there are more people crossing the red plain to be with michael. what the hell is so special about michael anyway?

three to see the king is a small book, probably considered to be more of a novella than a novel with a page count not much more than 150 pages. magnus mills' prose is light, he doesn't go into great detail about the characters - their histories or motivations - rather he delivers events. in the process he reveals subtle ironies that challenge the ideas of all the main characters. three to see the king is a mini epic, extremely readable and strikingly enjoyable.