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(More customer reviews)Riding With the Magi
Riding with the Magi by Thomas Russell is a completely original approach to the coming of age novel. Set in 1950s Kansas City, the authorial narrator recreates his own childhood when he competed for the affection and attention of his father with his brother, Ned Jumper. The catch is that Ned is a fictional, Tom Swift-type boy adventurer who the narrator's father spends most of his time creating. Both Ned and the narrator are troubled by their own troubled sense of reality and identity. This entertaining and utterly compelling novel follows both of their adventures as the struggle to find themselves and a suitable world in which to live. In a third narrative thread we follow the adventures of Henry Ford, Thomas Edison, Harvey Firestone and the ghost of nineteenth century naturalist John Burroughs as they caravan touring Buicks on a tour of the Mid-West." With hilarious synchronicity, the three threads are ingeniously brought together with a surprising explosion of reality-blending, ontological fireworks in one of the most original fantasies I've read since Jorge Luis Borges or Alan Lightman's Einstein's Dreams. Filled with wit and wisdom, it is a novel that is not afraid to be intelligent as it dances playfully along the border of literature and popular escapist fiction. After a long (twentieth) century of angst-ridden fiction about dysfunctional people, it's good to read a serious and thought-provoking work of literature that is essentially joyful and happy.
Thomas Beltzer, author of Parcheesi Blues
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