I thought I had read almost all of Magnus Mills’ books, but I’ve just checked the list on Wikipedia and I’m still wading in the shallow waters. He’s written 16 novels (or novellas) and four collections of short stories, and I’ve read a paltry eight of them. Still, I shan’t let that get in the way of doing some unnecessary rankings of this interesting, eccentric, very British novelist.
8. The Maintenance of Headway (2009)
I’ve never read a book by Mills that I disliked, but I didn’t quite chime with him on my first outing. That might change if I re-read it, but this short book about bus drivers left me a bit nonplussed. Having introduced my book group to his writing yesterday, I saw the same bafflement in many faces – so perhaps it just takes a while to get to grips with Mills’ particular style?
7. The Scheme For Full Employment (2003)
And this was the book that I got my book group to read! I wish I’d gone for one I love more, in retrospect, but I still found much to enjoy and admire. It’s about a group of men working for UniVan, driving between various depots seemingly pointlessly – under a scheme where everyone is employed, however uselessly. It has Mills’ trademark simplicity and matter-of-factness that gradually reveals itself as satire, but I found it rather less funny than other examples.
6. Screwtop Thompson (2010)
The only short story collection I’ve read by Mills has many brilliantly odd stories in it, alongside one or two that worked less well for me. In a commentary that will become familiar, they are really horror stories disguised as funny stories disguised as stories about nothing.
5. The Trouble With Sunbathers (2020)
Since 2020, Mills has self-published his books and been pretty prolific, with at least one every year. This is the only of those books I’ve read, and it is excellent – gatekeepers man the gates along the British coast that keep everyone out of the now-American-owned land. As ever, totally odd and very matter-of-fact, which somehow makes it odder.
4. All Quiet on the Orient Express (1999)
Mills really has an eye, or perhaps ear, for excellent titles. This is a cautionary tale for those of us who find it impossible to say ‘no’, as the unnamed narrator is asked for a favour which becomes another and somehow spirals into indentered slavery. But in a lighthearted way?
3. The Restraint of Beasts (1998)
These top three are absolute masterpieces. Mills had worked as a fencer (building fencers, rather than thrusting swords) and turned his experience into this novel that has a dark, funny twist on the job. No less than Thomas Pynchon described it as a ‘demented, deadpan comic wonder’, which I think is very accurate. It was my third book by him, and when I realised I loved him.
2. The Forensic Records Society (2017)
Mills’ final ‘mainstream’ book is about a group who gather to listen to records in a room where time seems to pass at a different rate to the world outside. Rival factions start up, and the whole thing is an excellent example of how Mills’ novels are somehow laced with threat and surrealism even when you can’t work out why.
1. Three To See The King (2001)
My favourite of Mills’ books is about someone who has built a tin hut in the middle of nowhere in a desert. Someone else has another one a few miles away, and another pair aren’t much further away. But then rumours come of a charismatic man arriving in the region. As I wrote in my review, ‘What makes it all the more unsettling is that it isn’t at all clear WHY it’s unsettling. It seems to be a simple story of harmless people doing numbingly ordinary things. And yet the reader feels constantly anxious, as though there is something around the corner; some horror that has perhaps been in full sight the whole time.’
Have you read any Mills? Are you tempted to try any of these? And which of the remaining 12 books should I prioritise?