Disenchanted 'Narnia' fan finds her way back

When Laura Miller was in second grade, her teacher handed her a copy of "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" by C.S. Lewis. She was never the same again. "It was this book that made a reader out of me," she writes, in "The Magician's Book," a memoir of her lifelong fascination with the seven children's books that make up the "The Chronicles of Narnia."

Miller grew up to become one of this country's most popular literary critics. She co-founded Salon.com, has been a columnist for the New York Times Book Review and is a contributor to the New Yorker. Few writers of her ilk would have the guts to claim "The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe" as anything more than a guilty pleasure. Like the other Chronicles, it carries a heavy load of Christian symbolism that for many adult readers overshadows everything else about the story. (Strikingly, children almost never notice this aspect of the books, even though Aslan, the lion who rules Narnia, is a Christ figure.)

Most critics who write about Narnia are evangelical Christians, and they claim Lewis as one of their own. The point of their analysis is usually to proselytize, and Lewis' reputation has suffered as a result. Most secular intellectuals view him and people who are interested in him with suspicion or contempt. Yet Miller, who does not identify as a Christian, is an uncommonly independent-minded critic. (Full disclosure: She edited a few reviews I wrote for Salon years ago; we've since maintained an occasional correspondence.) For this, her first book, she chose to explore a patch of literary territory that few of her peers would brave.

Her choice is our boon. "The Magician's Book" is an engrossing story of a reader's education. Empathetic, rigorous, erudite, funny, generous and surprising, it is easily the best book ever written about Lewis. Miller draws sound and dazzling connections among the details of his life and literary inspirations, which ranged from medieval epics to the Victorian forerunners of modern fantasy. (She can tell you which Led Zeppelin album cover folds out to show a picture of Dunluce, the Irish castle that may have inspired Narnia's Cair Paravel.)

At the outset, however, she offers a warning: "There is one major thematic province that I will do no more than fly over: Lewis's Christianity." That field, she explains, has already been plowed. Her goal is to "illuminate [Narnia's] other, unsung dimensions, especially the deep roots of the Chronicles in the universal experiences of childhood and in English literature."