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 Magus of Stonewylde has been labelled as “contemporary romance”, “cult fiction”, “teenage novel”, “fantasy” and “pagan fiction”. In what genre would you classify the book? Or is it uncategorisable? A bookshop’s nightmare – please help! One early reviewer on Amazon said, “The place lives; breathes; whispers on the wind; as if the reader were actually there; experiencing everything that the characters are. There is an enchantment in the air; in the beautiful descriptive passages of the book.” To what extent do you feel Stonewylde to be a real place? Many readers have said they can picture it perfectly, and feel that if they looked hard enough in Dorset, would be able to find it. In creating a realistic place, has Kit Berry followed Thomas Hardy in drawing on real locations, albeit with fictitious names, and merely describing them, or has she created a different world in the style of Narnia or Middle Earth? How real is Stonewylde to you?
Stonewylde is run on feudal lines, and yet the Villagers are for the most part very content with their lot. Miranda questions this in the early days, doubting the morality of the social system at Stonewylde. Is it right that the privileged few should live in luxury whilst the majority of the inhabitants live in very basic conditions and toil hard doing menial work? Is Magus justified in stating, “The Villagers lead very full and happy lives … they’re certainly not exploited. You mistakenly equate hard physical work with a poor, unfulfilled life. I wish my life was as rich and uncomplicated as the Villagers’.” To what degree do the attractions of such a system, where everyone has a place, their welfare is assured, and there is no such thing as “money troubles”, justify the loss of freedom of choice and lack of modern material comforts?
One of the central themes to this book is Sylvie’s coming of age, developing from a damaged and pathetic girl into a young woman who begins to defy the authority that she believes is unfair. Pivotal to this development is her gradual estrangement from her mother, to whom she’d always been very close. Magus succeeds in masking his true nature from Miranda, and isolates the mother and daughter to a certain extent, creating conflict where there was none before. Is this a realistic development? Is mother-love always constant, or does this book reflect a true divergence which happens in a mother-daughter relationship, especially when a new man is introduced?
Does the paganism described in this book detract from its literary value? Having what some perceive to be a “cult religion” at its heart, would you consider this to be off-putting to many readers? How did you feel about the rituals and ceremonies described? Could this book instigate a book-burning frenzy, or is it more likely to soothe peoples’ fears about a religion they may have previously known nothing of?
On a more light-hearted note, these are discussions taken from the Stonewylde Forum:
- Who’s your favourite character and why?
- What would you be – Villager or Hallfolk?
- In the film, who would play Magus?
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