Three to See the King
A Novel
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5.0 • 1 Rating
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- $11.99
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- $11.99
Publisher Description
A novel rich in comic menace from the author of The Restraint of Beasts
In a setting Samuel Beckett might have found homey lives a man in a house made of tin. He is content. The tin house is well constructed and located miles from the tin houses of his nearest neighbors. Though he seems to have escaped society, however, society finds him.
One day, a woman arrives and moves in. Soon a neighbor comes to visit, and then another. Soon, moving figures silhouette the horizon. People dismantling their tin houses and setting off to find a master builder with a revolutionary message. The gravitational pull cannot be resisted.
Nor can this novel. Part mystery, part parable, Three to See the King stalks the reader's imagination and grows inexorably and irresistibly in the telling.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
For his third novel, former London bus driver Mills (The Restraint of Beasts) delivers a remarkable fable packed with amusing biblical allusions and eccentric characters. It begins in a house of tin "in the middle of a vast and deserted plain," where the unnamed narrator lives alone. Three of his friends Simon Painter, Philip Sibling and Steve Treacle also live on the plain, also in houses of tin. The narrator's primary activities consist of sweeping away the sand that accumulates at his doorstep and listening to the incessant wind, until the severely critical Mary Petrie arrives unannounced one day with a trunk of her belongings in tow and starts pushing his buttons. From Simon, the narrator learns of a new, mysterious "neighbor," Michael Hawkins, in whom Simon and the others become increasingly interested. They even dismantle Simon's house and move it closer to Michael's, to the narrator's annoyance. He then learns that the strangers he has been seeing in the area are helping Michael to dig a giant canyon that will hold an entire city of tin houses. This hits a nerve, as the narrator's unrealized dream of living in a canyon has always been "quite a sensitive matter" for him. Urged on by Mary, he goes to investigate and discovers that a cultlike atmosphere has formed around Michael and his colossal project. But when Michael tells his followers that plans have changed and they won't actually be living in houses of tin, all hell breaks loose and it is up to the narrator to save the day. Mills, who has been a finalist for England's Booker Prize, flaunts his influences (Beckett, Sartre) to delightful effect in this weird, poignant story.
