The Magician's Book : A Skeptic's Adventures in Narnia

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In one of the most vivid memories from my childhood, nothing happens. On a clear, sunny day, I’m standing near a curb in the quiet suburban California neighborhood where my family lives, and I’m wishing, with every bit of my self, for two things. First, I want a place I’ve read about in a book to really exist, and second, I want to be able to go there. I want this so much I’m pretty sure the misery of not getting it will kill me. For the rest of my life, I will never want anything quite so much again.

The place I longed to visit was Narnia, the setting for a series of children’s novels by C. S. Lewis. There are things about these books that I, at age nine, did not yet understand and did not even realize were there to be understood. My relationship to Narnia would turn out to be as rocky as any love affair, a story of enchantment, betrayal, estrangement, and reunion. A few years after the day I’m remembering, when I discovered some of the more obvious “secret” meanings in C. S. Lewis’s children’s books, I felt tricked, and for a long time I avoided even thinking about Narnia.

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